The Role of Administrative Proceedings in Protecting the Constitution with an Emphasis on Court of Administrative Justice

Protecting the constitution is considered as one of the major achievements of public law in recent century. In fact, the value and credibility of the constitution is being preserved when all element of a legal system operate in a coordinated manner and protecting the constitution is regared as its dominant aspect. From this perspective, there is no distinction in protecting the constitution in common legal rules since each of which is regarded as part of the legal system. Hence, it cannot be irrational to monitor the lack of conflict of laws with the constitution. This process in rules of law is followed by administrative courts and through the mechanism of administrative proceedings from two distinctive but complementary ways i.e. constitutionalizing administrative law and administrativeization of constitutional law. In accordance to Article 173 of Iranian Constitution, Court of Administrative Justice is as an authority for dealing with people’s grievances arising from measures and decisions taken by government officials in order to administer justice and it has the authority to cancel illegal decisions outside the scope of the authority of public administration and responsible for constitutional proceedings and judicial protection of principles of the constitution. In practice, this court is responsible for a significant part of judicial oversight and protection of the constitution especially in the realm of public law as the broadest part of the government. The purpose of this study is to analyze participation of the Court of Administrative Justice in the process of constitutionalizing administrative law as an instrument in line with constitutional-based supervision on rules of law and enhancing the process of protecting the constitution by expressing mechanism such as cancelation of provisions contrary to the law through relying to principles of the constitution.