The Article 113 and the Responsibility of Implementing the Constitution

The article 113 is one of the challenging articles of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In this article, the President has been delegated to carry out three responsibilities: 1) to be the highest official after the office of Leadership, 2) to act as the head of the executive and 3) to undertake the responsibility of implementing the Constitution. The main question here is “What responsibilities fall within or outside the President’s domain concerning the implementation of the Constitution as stipulated in the Article 113?” In answering the question mentioned above, three suppositions can be made: 1) The responsibility of implementing the Constitution includes all the articles of the Constitution; in other words, the President has the power to supervise all governmental institutions and organizations. 2) The responsibility of implementing the Constitution is restricted to the three powers; that is, the President has been entrusted with the task of supervising and controlling all the three powers in terms of his responsibility of implementing the Constitution and 3) the responsibility of the President as the head of the executive falls within the executive.
According to the writer of the article, the responsibility of implementing the Constitution is restricted to the executive in its proper sense. Having made a critical study on the first two suppositions, the researcher has put his view of the subject in question to test to see what conclusion he can obtain.