مجله نامه مفید
پیاپی 73 (1388)

Nowadays to achieve success in international business world requires being informed of the latest developments in trade area. Notwithstanding its increasing importance in modern business and finance, the subject of assignment of rights has long been neglected by lawmakers. But fortunately “Principles of European Contract Law 2002” and “UNIDROIT Principles 2004” have codified the issue. In this essay, the authors deal with some aspects of this issue in the light of these two Codes and the Iranian regulations.

Electronic commerce is expanding very fast. Among many issues, the formation of electronic contracts through an automated and autonomous system has received a lot of attention from legal academics, researchers and drafters of international conventions. This system could make an offer and acceptance and could determine the terms and conditions of a transaction without any human intervention or participation. Thus, the question has been raised whether a contract which is made by such automated system is legally valid. There are various arguments for the validity of contracts made by using intelligent systems. In this paper, we first examine the different views regarding the validity of contracts made by intelligent systems. Then, the validity of the autonomous formation of the electronic contracts in the context of Iranian legal system, the Iranian Electronic Commerce Act and Islamic jurisprudence will be investigated. Finally, we argue that such contracts are valid and binding from both legal and jurisprudential perspectives.

The exclusive character of a jurisdiction means that other jurisdictions could not acknowledge the matters which are attributed to that jurisdiction by law. The exclusive jurisdiction is only related to civil jurisdictions. Consequently, the exclusive competence of penal or administrative jurisdictions may not be discussed. Additionally, the attribution competence is distinguished from the exclusive competence. In fact, the forbiddance resulting from the attribution competence is limited to commencement of an action, but after this phase, the attribution competence of a jurisdiction may not impede other jurisdictions to accept the incidental matters and defensive remedies. In fact, a jurisdiction, before which an action is brought as an exception, could accept this action, even if this action is out of its attribution competence. In contrast, such a jurisdiction, could not accept these actions, if they are within exclusive competence of other jurisdictions.

Civil procedure rules are a complex of principles and regulations which are used in the whole process of a trial as a means of achieving the truth in courts. Since Speedy Trial and consequently the competent authority for it has an important role in civil procedure rules, this article seeks to consider and analyze comparatively the position of this competent authority in Iranian and English legal system.

Respecting individual's privacy means honoring their dwellings and workplaces and keeping their correspondence, letters and conversations surreptitious. Because of the importance of privacy as one of the significant concepts of developed legal systems and due to its close nexus with human dignity, personality and freedom, legislators and jurisprudence have endeavored to regulate acquiring evidence and to lay down specific rules and regulations in the field of inspection of houses and places -especially in primary investigations- and to subject its legitimacy and admissibility to respecting people's privacy. Although sometimes the importance of committed crimes and the priority of public benefits over those of the individuals, and specially the prevalence of security-oriented considerations have been used to justify derogations from this principle, the legitimacy and authenticity of acquired evidences have nevertheless been always evaluated in the light of respecting the law and proportionality and necessity of inspections. Despite the fact that Iranian legislator and its jurisprudence are not alien with the concept of privacy, existing rules and regulations are not sufficient for protecting various dimensions of this organizing principle of civil societies. Therefore, considering French legal system- which has been amended in the light of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights- may make Iranian legislator acquainted with significant dimensions of protecting privacy and with the approaches of other legal systems and prepare the ground for legislative changes in this regard.

Paper money is not a symbolic object; it has inherent value in itself. So there's no doubt that it should be considered as a legal object. It will also be reasonable to mortgage paper money in the form of contract of mortgage by debtor to his creditor. Thus, this agreement may be a useful one both for mortgagor (debtor) and mortgagee (creditor) and even for the others. Thus, paper money which is given to the debtor is a pledge for him not for paying debit. If the mortgagee breaches the contract, he/she will be responsible to the mortgagor. We should consider the liability of mortgagor based on the nature of the act done by mortgagee.

This article attempts to offer some strategies for preventing terrorism on the basis of experiences obtained through situational crime prevention in other crimes. There is no fundamental difference between crime and terrorism. It is a crime that is committed with political motive. For the prevention of terrorism, the rationality of terrorist's decision-making and the structure of opportunity must be analyzed and recognized. Terrorists are interested in certain kinds of weapons and tools and for the purpose of the prevention of terrorism these weapons should be controlled, vulnerable targets should be protected and facilitating conditions should be eliminated. Finally five strategies of situational crime prevention for the prevention of terrorism are considered. Since terrorism has great variety and the structure of each attack is different from another, therefore each of them needs to be analyzed separately on the basis of these general principles.

The notion of the “Iranian by origin” was used in the pre-Islamic revolution Constitution and is used in the Islamic Republic of Iran's Constitution. The phrase is, however, not mentioned in the statutes. The Guardian Council of the constitution has not yet officially interpreted the notion. Some Iranian jurists have attempted to define the notion of “Iranian by origin” in the title of Article 976(2) of the Civil Code.The author does not agree with those definitions and argues that a person must be considered Iranian by origin if he/she is born of parents with Iranian nationality at birth.