Formal Codification; a missing link in the codification of laws and regulations in Iran

One of the great problems of our society from the very beginning of the legislation in Iran in 1906 until now which passes more than one hundred years is that of law and legislation. Among these problems, the management of the massive volume of the laws and regulations is still a problem that needs consideration. The legislative inflation is so much that even lawyers confront difficulties in finding applicable rules. Though different attempts have been made since 1960s to manage the legislative inflation in Iran and two laws are enacted in 1971 and 2010 in this respect, but much of these efforts belong to the depuration and not codification. Depuration that means to recognize and remove repealed laws and regulations and to do some minor edits on them, is a part of the codification in its formal sense that is fulfilled in some countries such as United States, France and Argentina. The main purpose of the codification is to consolidate all existing laws (and regulations) regarding a given subject in a single text with a unified and comprehensive structure and to locate all articles and sub-articles in their proper place in this structure. In this sense, formal codification goes beyond the mere depuration. The research method is descriptive and analytic.