Law of Iran

Iran's legal system rests on Islamic law as reinterpreted through Twelver Shia jurisprudence, established as the basis of the state's legal order by the constitution adopted after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which requires that all legislation conform to Islamic principles. The Guardian Council, a body of clerics and jurists, reviews every law passed by the elected parliament, the Majlis, and can veto legislation it judges incompatible with Islamic law or the constitution. Procedurally the courts retain civil law style structures inherited from legal reforms carried out earlier in the twentieth century under French influence, but substantive criminal law is governed by the Islamic Penal Code, which prescribes categories of punishment, including hudud, qisas and diya, drawn directly from Islamic legal doctrine. The result is a hybrid system in which continental style procedure and court organization operate under a religious law framework that the constitution declares supreme over ordinary legislation.