عبدالمجید سودمندی

Considering the essential role of national authorities in the implementation of treaties, it is important to study the process of determining them. In this article, in order to identify the weaknesses and strengths of the Iranian executive branch's procedure in determining national authorities, we have analyzed this procedure in a descriptive-analytical way. The result is that the authority of the government in this field is basically based upon assigning this authority by the legislature, which has been achieved in: 1- Determining the national authority in an Act and granting the authority to change it, 2- Not specifying the national authority in an Act and granting the authority to determine and change it. If the legislature is silent about the national authority, the government can determine the national authority by referring to Principle 138 of the Constitution for ensuring the implementation of the law ratified a treaty. In addition, in the case of ratification of a treaty by the government or determination of a national authority in the text of a treaty, the authority of the government is not based on the will of the legislature. One of the important criticisms of the government's procedure in this field is citing incorrect bases for determining some national authorities, especially in the wrong reference to the Act of adding two notes to the Act of membership of Iran in international organizations and institutions of 1370 and citing the principle 138 instead of the Act assigning the authority to determine the national authority.

Many international treaties explicitly or implicitly require the determination of national authorities by the contracting parties in order to implement all or part of the treaty obligations, and therefore, it is important to study the process of determining national authorities. In Iran, only the legislative and executive branches have played a role in determining national authorities; In this article, in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the Iranian legislature's procedure in determining national authorities, we have analyzed this procedure in a descriptive-analytical way. The result of the study is that due to the silence of the Constitution regarding national authorities, the legislature has, based on the general competence of legislation, the authority to determine national authorities for all international treaties and institutions. Despite this, in many cases, the legislature has left the determination/changing of national authorities to the executive branch, which is critical, especially considering that some of these national authorities are non-executive. Anyway, comprehensive knowledge of the treaty, which is required to determine a national authority, is generally obtained for parliamentarians at the time of ratification of a treaty, and therefore, the most appropriate tool for determining the national authority is the Act ratifying the treaty, but the legislature in rare cases has used these Acts to determine national authorities. Meanwhile ratification of a treaty by the executive branch, which is allowed in some cases, and determination of national authorities in the text of the treaties, have limited the power of the legislature to determine national authorities.

One of the factors in the different implementation of a treaty is that countries implement the treaty according to the text approved in their domestic systems, while this text may differ from the authenticated texts of the treaty. Therefore the compatibility of Persian and non-Persian texts of treaties is important. Nevertheless, reviewing the Iranian Acts and Regulations indicate that many of the arrangements for this compatibility are not foreseen and even "Regulation on How to prepare and Conclude International Agreements" of 1371 and "Guidelines for the Formalization of International Legal Agreements" of 1390 could not fix this defect. In addition, although the relevant institutions in the ratification of a treaty have been able in some cases, by recognizing the incompatibility between the texts, to provide amendment of Persian text, however, there are still significant errors in the Persian text of many treaties, and implementation of some of them, has led to Iran's condemnation by international institutions. Reviewing the Iranian laws in the field of preparing the Persian text of the treaty and monitoring its compliance with the authenticated texts is the first step to eliminate the shortcomings of these laws and the present article has been written with this aim.

In spite of the silence of the Constitution and the Guardian Council's Regulations regarding the Council's authority to oversee the compatibility of Persian and non-Persian texts of treaties, the council has returned some approved treaties to the parliament because the texts are inconsistent. The question that arises in this regard is to what extent the action of the council has been able to correct the Persian text of the treaties?According to a preliminary study, the above action of the council resulted in the declaration of ambiguity in the parliament's enactments. Therefore, in this article, the council's declarations of ambiguity in regard to the compatibility of Persian and non-Persian texts of the treaties were examined and it turned out that out of 852 treaties reviewed by the council until the end of 1399, 12 treaties faced such ambiguity and the factors of ambiguity were: 1. Lack of treaty annexes, 2. Obscurity of some articles of the treaty, 3. Existence of provisions contrary to legal principles, 4. Editing, phraseology, spelling, and translation errors. These cases have been examined and most of them were found to be correct, so the parliament has corrected the enactments as a result of the errors raised by the council.However, the council's worthy role was not without flaw in this respect, since in some cases its declaration of ambiguity did not hold true, and in other cases, despite the contradiction between the Persian and non-Persian texts of a treaty, the parliament's enactment was approved by the Guardian Council.

Despite long history of fixed fine in Iran, this punishment is not an appropriate one due to the impact of inflation on it; especially, Because, according to the legality of punishment, adjustment of fine must be done by legislature and legislation is a lengthy process. Accordingly, many fines remained unchanged for years and their deterrence was disappeared. Fortunately, Finally the legislature by "predicting the criteria for adjustment in law", was, while observing the above principle, able to secure the Guardian Council's opinion about principle 85 of the Constitution in assignment of adjustment to non-legislative institutions. In this Article, by extracting the legislature approaches about adjustment, the criteria and challenges of these approaches were studied and it was observed that prediction of adjustment by non-legislative institutions, because of ambiguities and contradictions of these acts and optional nature of adjustment by non-legislative institutions, could not solve the problem of adjustment by legislation.

After half a century from the first provisions on air pollution of Iranian cities in the Amendment of Some Provisions and Addendum of New Provisions to the Municipal Act of 1967 and on the basis of experiences gained from 22-year enforcement of the Prevention of Air Pollution Act of 1995, the Iranian legislative and executive branches passed the Clean Air Act in 2017. Although the Clean Air Act contains many innovations and strengths, unfortunately, this Act has also some weaknesses and irregularities which failure to eliminate them would make its implementation hard and its success impossible. Some of the most important irregularities and weaknesses of this Act that will be examined in this paper include the following: reducing the speed of the detection of emergency situations of air pollution and taking necessary measures in these situations; conflicts and overlapping between some of its Provisions, underestimating the social, economic and political consequences of combating air pollution in some cases; failure to grant the general right of public interest litigation to the Department of Environment; numerous irregularities in criminal provisions, notably the lack of prediction of prompt judicial proceedings and non-use of imprisonment punishment, and finally; ambiguity in some Provisions of the said Act.

Despite passage of tens of years since the adoption of the first laws and regulations relating to air pollution in Iran which their first comprehensive instance was the Regulation of Prevention of Air Pollution of 1975 and the latest instance of them is the Clean Air Act of 2017, the air pollution problem in Iran is still serious. Persistence of this problem in Iran, is partly due to defect of laws and regulations and partly due to the poor performance of them by governmental organs. Nevertheless, the Iranian judicial institutions, as the last resort for supervision on the enforcement of laws and regulations, can play a key role in the fight against air pollution, especially if the available strengths and opportunities are appropriately used in this fight. In this article, we will, referring to Iran's laws and regulations and in an analytical way, explain these strengths and opportunities in the hope that: 1. negligence of these strengths by judicial institutions, and their doubts about the use of them in the fight against air pollution would be resolved, and 2. awareness of available opportunities and use of them by individuals and institutions involved in air pollution lawsuits would be increased.

"Reasonableness and legality of judicial decisions" is one of the most accepted legal principles governing judicial and quasi-judicial institutions and it can be assumed a result of presumption of innocence and a precondition of justice in judicial settlement of disputes. This rule has always not only been part of Iran's Acts of procedure, but principle 78 of amendment to the Constitutionalism Constitution and principle 166 of the Islamic Republic of Iran' Constitution also have emphasized on it. Hence, it is obvious that Administrative Justice Court as a judicial institution established by the Islamic Republic of Iran's Constitution is subject to this rule.In this paper, we study the adherence of the General Board of Administrative Justice Court to this rule and discuss, in an analytical way, some cases of violation of the above rule by General Board of Administrative Justice Court in invoking legislative Acts, and it would be seen that this violation is in three forms: "defects in legal documentation and legal arguments", "failure to invoke a specific Act" and "failure to invoke specific articles of Acts". The study also reveals that two major consequences of this violation is "issuing wrong or doubtful decisions" and "adoption of regulations similar to previous revoked regulations". Hence, given that the General Board of Administrative Justice Court is the unique referee for complaint of regulations and its decisions are not supervised by any other institution, it can rightly be expected that it try harder for precise observance of this rule; in particular, given that the consequences of wrong decisions of it, Contrary to decisions of other judicial bodies, in revocation or not revocation of regulations is not confined to the complainant but can affect a large group of people.

After half a century from the first provisions on air pollution in Iranian cities in an amendment to the Municipal Act in 1967 and on the basis of experiences gained from 22-year enforcement of the Prevention of Air Pollution Act of 1995, Iranian legislative and executive branches passed the Clean Air Act in 2017. Although this Act has some weaknesses, but its strengths, in particular improvement of criminal provisions and its innovations compared to the Prevention of Air Pollution Act, have created the hope that by enforcing it, the catastrophic situation of air pollution would be resolved. The most important improvements of criminal provisions in this Act are: 1. increasing criminal liability of juristic persons, 2. coherence of punishments, 3. anticipating modification of fines, 4. Increasing punishments. The most important innovations of it also are: 1. using the economic tools, 2. renovation of motor vehicles, 3. sampling and monitoring of pollutants by industrial units, 4. production and supply of renewable and clean energies, 5. increasing the green space of cities, 6. combat dust phenomenon, 7. granting the position of sheriff's officer to the protection unit of Department of Environment, and 8. providing specialized courts in the field of air pollution.

Reasonableness and Legality of judicial decisions are among the most accepted legal principles governing judicial and quasi-judicial institutions, and the Administrative Justice Court (“AJC”) as a judicial institution is subject to this rule. However, it is undeniable that in some cases, the General Board of Administrative Justice Court (“GBAJC”) has evaded or neglected to abide by this rule.
Failure of the GBAJC to comply with this rule could be occurred in invocation of any of the legal evidences. In this paper, by studying the types of violation of this rule by the GBAJC in invocation of "the Constitution", it was seen that this violation resulted in issuing doubtful or even wrongful decisions. Hence, given that the GBAJC is the unique referee for complaint of governmental regulations, and its judgments are not supervised by any other institutions, it can be rightly expected that it shall try harder for precise observance of this rule; in particular, given that the consequences of its wrongful judgments in revocation or not revocation of governmental regulations not only is confined to the plaintiff itself but can affect a large group of people.
 
Keywords: Reasonableness of Judicial Decisions, the General Board of Administrative Justice Court, Judgment, the Constitution, the Guardian Council.

Air pollution that began with the discovery of fire and increased by the spread of human communities then gradually emerged as a problem of the communities since the Industrial Revolution, continues to be a major harmful factor to human health and life and the environment. This is despite that the fight against air pollution began, in some cases, hundreds years ago, and in domestic legislation of some countries from nineteenth century and in most countries from the middle of twentieth century.
In the second half of the twentieth century after the publication of results of researches on the effects of air pollution on human health and the environment, countries came to the conclusion that the fight against this problem will be possible only through international cooperation. The result of this consensus was several international conferences and treaties to protect the environment in general or specifically to fight against air pollution.
The next important step in this regard was emergence of the concept of "the right to the environment" as a human right which began with the 1972 Stockholm Declaration. After the adoption of the Declaration, not only some human rights instruments set "the right to the environment" among other human rights and some environmental law instruments expressed the relationship between the environment and human rights, but also judicial and regulatory human rights bodies by giving environmental interpretation to the human rights, recognized "the right to the environment" as a derivative human right. In addition, some judicial and regulatory bodies outside the human rights systems have acknowledged the relationship between environmental protection and human rights. So, now there is not any doubt about "the right to clean air" as a component of "the right to the environment" as an autonomous human right or at least as a derivative human right.
Please cite this article as: Abbasi M, Soudmandi A. Human Rights and the Right to Clean Air. Bioeth J Q 2016; 6(21): 111-134.

It can be said that the right to freedom of expression, which is prerequisite to enjoy other human rights, is reflected in the first national and international human rights documents. However, the definition of this right and the emphasis on its different components has changed over the time. But it can be claimed that most of the universal and regional documents on human rights have offered very similar definitions of this right. Acording to these definitions, the right to freedom of expression is the right of "every person" to express their "information" and "ideas" with "any Medium" and even "over the domestic borders".
However, some documents such as "the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam" have not stipulated all of the components of the right to freedom of expression and have not presented a transparent definition. But these documents cannot violate the above definition, because these documents are not binding and signatory States of them have ratified the international instruments on freedom of expression, especially International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in the 1998 Conference, which made the crime of aggression, as one of international crimes, subject to jurisdiction of the Court, and adoption of necessary provisions for "defining this crime and setting out the conditions to exercise jurisdiction over it" at the 2010 Kampala Review Conference represent milestones in the International Criminal Law. These two events have made advocates of justice and human rights hopeful that, in the near future, those accused of committing this crime, which is the most important international crime and the source of other crimes such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, will be sued at the International Criminal Court.
However, the factors that, after the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, prevented inclusion of the crime of aggression in the jurisdiction of ad hoc international criminal courts had, directly or indirectly, undesirable consequences in the aforesaid events. Including the amendment procedure of the Statute for adding provisions necessary for applying the Court's jurisdiction over this crime is vague, and therefore, the provisions adopted at the Kampala are, in some respects, ambiguous or conflicting with the Statute. Most importantly, the procedure of entry into force of Kampala amendments as provided in them is inconsistent with the amendment procedure of the Statute as provided in it. So, if these ambiguities and contradictions are not seriously challenged. resolved, the legality and possible reliance of the Court on Kampala amendments to exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression would be.

Although there is no doubt about the prohibition of defamation as one of the legitimate restrictions on the right to freedom of expression، but the boundaries of this prohibition are controversial، and one of the main controversies is about the kind and the nature of defamation''s victim. In this case، a group of scholars believe that only human beings are the object of defamation، and the subjective values such as national identity، religion or national symbols cannot be the object of defamation. In contrast، some scholars believe that human beings are not the exclusive object of defamation. Ratification of a resolution entitled «Defamation of Religions» by the Human Rights Commission in 1999 and reiteration of such a resolution by the Commission and the Human Rights Council and even the UN General Assembly thereafter indicates the depth of the above difference. Despite that the above institutions، given the ratification of the above resolutions، have confirmed the possibility of defamation of religion، some scholars، especially the Thematic Rapporteurs of the above institutions have opposed these resolutions and thereby have rejected the concept of defamation of religion. This article، while reflecting the spread of opposition to the above resolutions، reviews the arguments of the oppositions to them. Overall، the author concluded that these resolutions have been actually codified to protect the rights and dignity of persons and religious groups; therefore، they are consistent with the International Standards of Human Rights.

Freedom of religion and belief is one of the most fundamental human rights، and it can said that even the general idea of human rights was due to the protection of religious minorities. This right، which has been reflected in the first domestic laws on human rights، like “French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” and “First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution«، has also been under consideration from the outset of the world movement for human rights، and the most important international human rights instruments such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights، Covenant on Civil and Political Rights، European Convention on Human Rights، American Convention on Human Rights and African Charter on Human and Peoples'' Rights have emphasized on it.

Hate speech that can briefly be defined as advocacy of hate and hatred based on nationality, race or religion, possesses a special situation in international law. Even a specific type of these speeches that leads to genocide is one of the few international crimes along with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some events of the recent decades indicate that the racist movements, with the hate speeches as their main motive, are expanding in the world and even in the Europe that is supposed to be the pioneer of the human rights movement. This indicates the need for and the importance of discussion about this issue. This necessity has led that, besides the general prohibitions on the freedom of expression in the international instruments of human rights, some of the documents, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination have specifically mentioned the prohibition of these speeches. However, the international instruments have been divided in defining this concept. This difference that especially is between the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination on the one side and other international instruments on the other has increased the importance of this concept's understanding.

Defamation is prohibited in the international system of human rights and in domestic legal systems. Prohibition of defamation in domestic legal systems is explicit, but not in the international documents of human rights. Given that defamation causes damage to the reputation of people, and international instruments including the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, European Convention on Human Rights, American Convention on Human Rights and African Charter on Human and People's Rights have emphasized to respect the rights or reputation of others in the enjoyment of human rights, especially the right to freedom of expression, no body hesitated in banning defamation. Unfortunately, we see differences on the components of this legal concept, which can obscure the concept and range of defamation, and thus pave the way to abuse of libel laws. This disagreement also can be seen in the choice between criminal and civil laws dealing with libel. It is hopeful that the international system and domestic legal systems have accepted almost the same defenses against libel charges. Acceptance of these defenses is such that prevent, unauthorized damage to the rights and reputation of others and, at the same time, prevents violation of the right to freedom of expression. These defenses, especially, ensure the rights of those accused of libel against public officials and governmental bodies.

The final version of the Articles on State Responsibility, adopted by the ILC in 2001, contains considerable advances over the previous draft of 1996. The ILC reconsidered the group of provisions dealing with the multilateral aspect of responsibility relations, and proceeded to 'decriminalize' international responsibility; to classify international obligations by taking into account the intrinsic nature and beneficiaries of the obligations breached; to differentiate the positions of individually injured states and not directly affected states; and to spell out the legal consequences of 'seriou's breaches of obligations under peremptory norms and of ergaomnes obligations. The present paper offers a critical analysis of the relevant provisions of the text on state responsibility by focusing on their interplay. Emphasis is also given to the question of countermeasures by not directly affected states.