A Critical Review of Some of the Rules Relating to Conflict of Laws in Personal Terms from the Point of View of Jurisprudence and Law

Some of the articles of Iran's international private law concerning the conflict of laws,which are reflected in articles 5 to 10 in the first volume and 956 to 975 of the second volume of the Civil Law, have suffered from at least one of the following problems: 1) uncertainty and brevity of some articles and the differences in judicial interpretations: these ambiguity and brevity of some articles lead to different scientific and legal interpretations and therefore, conflicting judgments. It seems that the arguments of the holders of these views are not strong enough to force the proponents of competing viewpoints to accept them. The interpretation of 'reduction of the lower grade' mentioned in article 973 of the Civil Law can be enumerated as one of the examples of these cases. After decades of legislation, the continuation of this situation seems unreasonable. Clearly, the problem with scientific interpretations cannot be solved by convention and consensus like administrative problems. So, it is necessary to solve this problem basically by logical and judicious interpretation and analysis of this case, revision in some related legal articles and clarified rewriting of these controversial articles. 2) The legislation problem: some other articles, assuming the clarity and lack of ambiguity, are suffering from the problem of non-compliance with legislative logic in the Islamic Republic of Iran. For instance, they are not benefitted from full compliance with Islamic teachings as much, and the duty of protecting Iranian nationals is not taken into consideration as well. The single article approved in August 1933 related to the personal status of non-Shia Iranians and articles 6, 7, 963 to 965 of the Civil Code are examples of such cases. This paper aimed at explaining some of these problems and proposing amendments concerning these articles.