Permissibility of Extinction of the Right to Take Legal Action in Imāmī Jurisprudence (With an Emphasis on the Shaykh Ṣadūq's Theory)

Passage of time in the context of extinction of the right to take legal action as an imperative principle related to the procedural rights is of importance in the knowledge of law. This principle means that with the passage of certain length of time in law, the claim or complaint is no longer admissible. The importance of the matter is to the extent that by issuing order of inadmissibility in civil law and issuing order of suspending prosecution or suspension in criminal law, the execution of the pending judicial case with any degree of importance is declared as dismissed and thereby a kind of legal order is brought in the judicial structure of the country and the entrance and accumulation of millions of dossiers is prevented. This principle, however, which was applied in civil code of procedure before the Islamic Revolution, was declared as illegal in civil affairs after the Revolution with respect to the view of the majority of Guardian Council members, although it was approved in canonical punishments. The basic question is whether by alluding to the legal criteria, the passage of time can be exploited in the modern form of the civil law? In principle, what is the viewpoint of the Imāmī jurists in this respect? The writers maintain that given the legal mechanisms and the traditions extant in reliable legal sources and the viewpoint of some Imāmī jurists, the legal soundness or at least lack of legal problem of extinction of the right to take legal action by means of time lapse can be proved. Accordingly, hypothesizing that time lapse as causing or extinguishing the principle of this right does not have a narrative origin, the writers have undertaken to criticize the opponents of time lapse as extinguishing the right to take legal action, which is the viewpoint of the renowned majority of the Imāmī jurists, and have provided certain ways to reject it and to prove the legal validity of time lapse.