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1. The source of all law is Sharia or religious law.
2. Legislative deliberation of the parliament, even when approved by the majority, do not become law unless approved by an un-elected body known as the Guardian Council.
3. The six members of the Guardian Council who have the final authority are all appointed by the leader.
4. Appointed bodies and institutions have veto power or supervisory role over most elected bodies in the Islamic republic. So we can say that all elected bodies are controlled by appointed bodies.
5. Professional law-making is not observed in the Islamic Republic. Laws are written ambiguously, thus not subject to principles of transparency, simplicity, directiveness, and check-and-balances. This leaves a great deal of room for judges to interpret the law in a partisan way.
6. Lack of a clear legal definition for Islamic law, as stipulated in the Constitution, is a major obstacle to reforming the legal system.
7. Although Islam recognizes Ijtihad as a legal instrument, the leader of the Islamic Republic does not appoint reformist clerics who might use this instrument. Given that most laws are written according to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, the absence of reformist-minded judges in the Guardian Council prevents the system to be more adaptive to public demands.
8. The majority of judges and clerics in legislative and judicial bodies are conservative and use a very narrow interpretation of Islam in establishing or implementing a law. All judges and clerics who believe in a more progressive and modern interpretation of Islam are outside of the system and have no effective control on the law-making in the Islamic Republic.
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