ILSS: Bahman Khodadadi, On Theocratic Criminal Law: The Rule of Religion and Punishment in Iran

Dr. Bahman Khodadadi (Harvard Law School) will present On Theocratic Criminal Law: The Rule of Religion and Punishment in Iran (Oxford University Press, 2024). This talk explores the roots and structures of the criminal law system of the world’s most prominent constitutional theocracy, the Shīʿī theocracy. While discussing the processes of de-westernization, which occurred in the wake of the Islamic Revolution, this work examines how the Islamic conception of civil order and polity has been established within the legal and theological framework of the Iranian Constitution. The presentation offers a ‘rational reconstruction’ of the theocratic criminal law and offers a critical analysis of the way criminal law functions as the centerpiece of this mode of theocratic domination. It illuminates how this revelation-based, punitive ideology functions, how the current Islamic Penal Code mirrors prevailing Shīʿī jurisprudence. It also explores the jurisprudential principles and dynamic power of Shīʿī Islam not only as a driving force behind political and social change but as a force that has been capable of forging a whole theocratic legal system.