A Comparative Study of Nature of Reward in Imamiyah Jurisprudence, Iranian Law and Law of the West

Nature of Reward is one of the subjects on which there is disagreement in Imamiyah Jurisprudence and Law. Recognition of the legal nature of Reward is of significance in terms of the conditions of fulfillment and its consequences and rules. The purpose of this article is recognizing the nature of Reward in Imamieh Jurisprudence, Iranian law and law of the west. The Jurists and lawyers have expressed different views in this regard. In the Imamiyah Jurisprudence there is no separation between offer of reward to the public and offer of reward to the certain person and jurists have stated their opinions in general terms. In the Iranian Civil Code the nature of  reward is not clearly explained and the term of obligation has been employed in an absolute way for refering to its nature. According to jurisprudential and legal analyses, it seems that reward have various external examples that can be determined in each case according to its requirements in the form of contract or unilateral juridical act or common causality. In law of the west, offer of reward to a certain person is not disputed and its nature is considered to be contractual. What is controversial is the offer of reward to the public. Some legal systems have accepted the the contractual approach and others have adopted the reward as a unilateral promise in which there is no need for acceptance and knowledge of the rewarder is not required except for the case of an explicit stipulation in the contract.