The Author-Oriented Approach in Interpreting the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Three main approaches would be recognized semantically regarding the legal texts and the Constitution: the author-oriented, text-oriented and interpretor-oriented approaches. The author-oriented approach has been the dominant interpretive theory of the most legal systems and to some extent under the attention of many countries like Iran and America. The meaning of the Constitution in the author-oriented theory arises from the intents of the legislator. This theory is accepted as the right and formal theory of interpretation in Shi’a Usul al-Figh (Principles of Shi’a jurisprudence) and also the viewpoints of the Guardian Council. Various branches like Intentionalism and Purposivism are all common in validating the intents of the author and while being evalutaed are to some extent the same. The present research examining some Constitutional law sources and the theories of Usul scholars and philosophy of law is to present the author-oriented interpretive viewpoint in Constitutional interpretation while shortly explaining the history, nature, its types and impression on the legal system of Iran. The evaluation of these preliminaries will elucidate the linguistic and non-linguistic problems of author-orinted theory.