Editor-in-Chief Lecture
Authors
1
Professor, Department of Private Law, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
2
Head of the Iranian Law and Legal Research Institute and former judge of the Supreme Court, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
This article examines the growing accumulation of defective policies and laws as a structural problem in contemporary governance and argues that a major contributing factor is the absence of scholarly and professional assertiveness in the legal and juristic community. While assertiveness is widely treated as a personal psychological virtue, the authors contend that its macro-level counterpart - critical engagement with enacted laws and public policies - has remained underdeveloped and, in some cases, actively discouraged. This has resulted in the long-term persistence of policies that have produced chronic economic instability, legal inconsistency, and social harm. The article reframes assertiveness as a professional duty of jurists, judges, and legal scholars, emphasizing that the health of a legal system depends not merely on the volume of legislation, but on the courage and capacity to subject law to sustained critical review.
To address the concern that critical legal analysis may undermine the religious foundations of the legal order, the paper grounds the legitimacy of critique in five converging sources: Islamic jurisprudence, constitutional principles, authoritative juristic doctrine, binding national policies on legislation, and comparative legal experience. Special attention is given to Farmān-e Mālek Ashtar, which explicitly warns against the instrumentalization of religion by those in power and thereby affirms the necessity of critical vigilance in legal and political life. Building on these foundations, the article identifies nine major patterns of defective policy-making, including inflationary legislation, erosion of the national currency, normalization of budget deficits, excessive legal exceptions, institutional immunity, disregard for empirical experience, and systematic neglect of the common good. The article ultimately argues that without institutionalizing a culture of critical assertiveness, legal reform remains superficial and social costs will continue to escalate. Courageous and methodical critique is therefore presented not as a threat to legal stability, but as its primary safeguard.
