Selection, Training, and Removal of Judges in Iran’s Judiciary
In any judicial system, a judge must serve as a guarantor of impartiality, independence of judgment, and the rule of law. Judicial independence does not simply mean that a judge is outwardly shielded from direct pressure. It also requires that the path to appointment, training, promotion, and continued tenure be structured on professional, legal, and independent criteria. Without such a foundation, fair trial guarantees are hollowed out from within, and the judiciary, rather than serving as a refuge for rights, becomes part of the machinery of power. In the judicial structure of the ruling regime in Iran, this condition is not an occasional deviation. It is an institutional feature, built into the system from the outset.
The central issue in this chapter is not merely how judges in Iran are recruited. It is what kind of judge this model of selection, training, and control produces, and what purpose that judge ultimately serves in practice. Within the judicial structure of the ruling regime in Iran, a judge passes from the outset through ideological, political, and religious filters. He is then shaped through formal judicial training and ideological commitment, and remains subject thereafter to disciplinary, administrative, and security oversight. The consequence of this model is not only the weakening of judicial independence. It is the creation of a judicial body in which “preservation of the system” takes precedence over justice, the right to defense, and judicial impartiality. This logic is one of the structural foundations of the repressive performance of Iran’s judiciary.
Legal Framework for the Selection of Judges
The principal legal basis for entry into the judicial office in Iran is the Law on the Conditions for the Selection of Judges of the Judiciary, adopted on 4 May 1982. This law stipulates that judges must be selected from among qualified men possessing faith, justice, practical commitment to Islamic standards, and loyalty to the system of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In this law, scientific and professional competence is not defined as an independent criterion. Rather, it is tied to the official religious and judicial structure, with emphasis on ijtihad, judicial authorization, or approved credentials. The 2000 Executive By-law on the Selection and Recruitment of Judges further entrenches this framework at the implementation level and shows that judicial recruitment from the outset combines examination, interview, vetting, and ideological as well as administrative qualification review.
As a result, the selection of a judge in Iran is not merely an academic or professional process. From the very first stage, ideological and political criteria are placed alongside legal criteria and, in practice, take precedence over them. Judicial independence in this structure is therefore not the starting point. It is restricted and engineered from the moment of entry. Before an applicant is assessed as an independent legal professional, he must be approved as a person aligned with the ruling political order.
Loyalty Before Competence; Ideological Criteria in Judicial Selection
The most striking feature of the 1982 law is that it defines a judge first and foremost through political and ideological loyalty. “Practical commitment to Islamic standards” and “loyalty to the system” are among the first conditions for entering the judiciary. This order is not accidental. In such a structure, an applicant is evaluated for ideological and political conformity before being assessed for legal knowledge, reasoning ability, or capacity to uphold fair trial standards. The 2000 Executive By-law reproduces the same logic by making qualification review through interview and vetting mandatory even after success in the scientific examination. In this way, passing the academic test alone is meaningless unless the applicant also passes the political and ideological filter.
The importance of these criteria is not limited to the recruitment stage. Note 1 to the Law on the Conditions for the Selection of Judges expressly provides that the same conditions must continue to apply to sitting judges. If a judge is no longer deemed to satisfy them, he may be transferred to an advisory role, retired, reassigned to administrative work, or bought out of service. This provision shows that ideological loyalty is not only a condition of entry, but also a condition of survival within the judicial body. As a result, a judge in such a system understands clearly that continued tenure, promotion, and access to important positions depend on the degree of his conformity with these same criteria. In such an environment, independence of judgment is not treated as a professional right. It can become a professional risk.
The Dominance of the Clerical Path Over the Legal Path
One of the most important features of this structure is the existence of a special path for seminarians from religious schools to enter the judiciary. Note 2 to the Law on the Conditions for the Selection of Judges allows recruitment, for the public and revolutionary prosecution offices, from among seminarians who possess general education at approximately high school level and who have completed the advanced seminary curriculum, after they undergo judicial training. The 2000 Executive By-law continues this approach by placing seminarians alongside university graduates among eligible applicants. A separate examination system is designed for them on the basis of religious jurisprudential texts and traditional seminary subjects. In some cases, confirmation of their scientific qualifications by seminary institutions exempts them from the written examination.
The difference between the university path and the seminary path is not merely a difference in diploma or exam content. It is a difference in the understanding of law, the source of legal legitimacy, and the role of the judge. In the university path, legal education is principally grounded in statutory interpretation, public and private law, procedural law, and legal reasoning. In the seminary path, training is based on fiqh, religious interpretation, and the official reading of Islamic rules. When this clerical path is strengthened not at the margins but at the center of the judicial body, especially in sensitive courts, the result is not simply educational diversity. It is the dominance of a model of judging in which adherence to the official interpretation of religion and ideological loyalty take precedence over legal independence and fair trial standards.
The consequences of this model are also evident at the level of institutional power. In a system where the highest judicial offices, including the Head of the Judiciary, the President of the Supreme Court, and the Prosecutor General, are effectively defined in ways that privilege clerics and mujtahids over classically trained jurists, even the most distinguished independent legal scholars are excluded from access to the top of the judicial hierarchy. This is not merely an educational or religious preference. It reflects the fact that the ruling regime in Iran has, from the beginning, organized the judiciary not as an independent institution for securing justice, but as one of the most important instruments of its survival. In such a structure, the broad entry of seminarians into the judiciary is not simply a recruitment policy. It is part of a wider project to ideologize adjudication, marginalize independent jurists, and convert the judiciary into an executive arm of regime preservation.
This domination does not end with the composition of personnel. It also shapes the legal logic governing the judicial system. When both legislation and adjudication are built around conformity with the official religious framework, law ceases to function as an autonomous field with its own principles and methods. It is placed in the service of ideological interpretation. In such a system, the possibility of internal criticism, independent reform, and impartial adjudication is restricted from the outset. The problem, therefore, lies not simply in the conduct of certain judges or certain branches. It lies in the structural foundations of an institution that was never designed to produce an independent judiciary.
Structural Restrictions on Women
The Law on the Conditions for the Selection of Judges, adopted on 4 May 1982, defined adjudication from the outset on the basis of being male. The text of the law expressly states that judges are to be selected from among qualified men. The exclusion of women from independent judicial authority was therefore not a temporary administrative practice. It was embedded in the law itself. The subsequent amendment of the law in 1995 did not remove this ban. It merely allowed women with judicial rank to be appointed to a limited number of positions, such as advisory roles, investigating judge positions, guardianship administration, legal departments, and certain other offices carrying judicial posts.
As a result, the presence of women within Iran’s judicial structure does not mean that they enjoy full and independent authority to issue final judgments. Even in areas such as family courts, the role of the female judicial adviser is advisory, while the final decision is issued by a male judge. The issue concerning women in Iran’s judiciary is therefore not only one of exclusion. It is one of unequal distribution of judicial power. Women have not been entirely removed from the judicial system, but their presence has been structured in ways that confine them largely to non-final and non-central positions. This pattern shows that the judicial structure of the ruling regime in Iran reproduces gender discrimination not only in recruitment, but also at the level of judicial authority and power.
Training, Oath, and the Ideological Reproduction of the Judge
The process of forming a judge in Iran does not end with examination and vetting. The 2000 Executive By-law states that, after acceptance, the candidate is referred for judicial apprenticeship and then for issuance of judicial appointment and participation in the oath ceremony. In this way, the judiciary does not simply select an already aligned candidate. It reproduces him within its own educational and institutional structure. Training judges in this system is not limited to instruction in law and procedure. It is also part of the institutionalization of loyalty.
The clearest expression of this linkage appears in the judicial oath. There, the judge commits not only to discovering the truth, restoring rights, and implementing justice, but also to fulfilling his duty in strengthening the foundations of the Islamic Republic and supporting the مقام رهبری, the Supreme Leader. This language shows that the judge’s obligation at the conclusion of training is not confined to justice and the application of law. It is explicitly tied to the preservation of the political order. At the very moment of formal entry into office, the judge swears not only to justice, but also to the protection of the political system. Such an oath clarifies the real nature of judicial training in Iran. The judge is prepared from the outset to function within an ideological structure, not to apply the law independently.
Mechanisms of Control, Removal, and Purging
Control over judges in this structure is not limited to recruitment and training. After entering service, judges remain under the oversight of a network of disciplinary, administrative, and security bodies. The Prosecutor’s Office and High Disciplinary Court for Judges, established under the 2011 Law on Supervision over the Conduct of Judges, is responsible for handling disciplinary violations by judges and may impose measures ranging from warning and reprimand to salary reduction, demotion, suspension, temporary or permanent dismissal, and termination of service. In addition, the Law on the Conditions for the Selection of Judges itself provides for the removal or downgrading of judges who are no longer deemed to meet the required ideological and political conditions. The Judiciary’s Protection Intelligence Center also functions in practice as part of the internal surveillance mechanism over judges and judicial personnel.
The issue, however, is not merely the existence of oversight tools. It is the type of judge this system allows to remain and advance. In a structure where job security, promotion, and access to sensitive positions may depend on ideological commitment, political compliance, and adherence to the logic of “preserving the system,” an independent, critical, or rights-oriented judge is naturally not strengthened but removed or marginalized. In such a system, disciplinary and security mechanisms do not serve only as tools of oversight. They operate as instruments for the continual purification of the judicial body in favor of aligned elements. This logic helps explain why, within Iran’s judicial structure, especially at the upper levels and in sensitive courts, clerics and personnel shaped by ideological and religious training occupy such a prominent place. The issue is not merely the presence of religious individuals in adjudication. It is the dominance of a model in which judging is assessed not by justice, the right to defense, and impartiality, but by its usefulness in safeguarding the political structure.
Structural Consequences; From the Erosion of Independence to Participation in Repression
When a judge is selected on ideological and political grounds, shaped through ideological training, bound by oath to support the Supreme Leader and strengthen the foundations of the system, and kept under disciplinary, administrative, and security oversight throughout his service, the result is not simply a reduction in independence of judgment. It is the creation of a model of adjudication in which preservation of the system takes precedence over justice. In such a structure, the judge does not decide in a professional vacuum. He decides in an environment saturated with political expectation, internal oversight, and potential professional cost. This becomes especially visible in political and security cases, where the judge effectively forms part of a chain that begins with the security officer and ends with the sentence.
The consequences of this structure cannot be understood only in theoretical terms. The judicial record of the ruling regime in Iran, from widespread and continuing executions to security prosecutions against opponents, protesters, political prisoners, and prisoners of conscience, demonstrates that the judiciary has functioned in practice not as a barrier to repression, but as one of its principal channels. When the judicial body is built on ideological loyalty, the outcome is not merely weakened professional standards. It is the production of judges who measure every ruling and every sentence by the yardstick of “preserving the system.” In such a model, judicial integrity and the idea of justice are displaced by political and ideological conformity.
This reality is also evident in major crimes. During the 1988 mass killing of political prisoners, in Tehran and in other parts of the country, a central role in the machinery of death was played by individuals whose legitimacy derived from religious, jurisprudential, and political status. In the Tehran Death Commission, three members were clerics, while only one classically trained jurist, Morteza Eshraghi, was present in the role of prosecutor. Yet the central decision-making role was held by Hossein-Ali Nayyeri, whom Khomeini named directly in his decree. In other parts of the country as well, it was largely religious judges who implemented Khomeini’s fatwa and made the crime against humanity possible. This was not a historical accident. It was a direct manifestation of the same structure that detached adjudication from independent legal standards and linked it to the execution of political and ideological will.
For this reason, the repressive performance of Iran’s judiciary should not be understood merely as the result of decisions by a few judges or a few individual branches. It is the logical outcome of an institutional architecture built from the outset to protect the mullahs’ regime rather than to secure fair trial guarantees. In such a structure, the judge is not simply an applier of law. He is part of a network that enables repression under the cover of judicial rulings, execution under the cover of legal process, and the elimination of dissent under the cover of justice.
Conclusion
The outcome of this chapter is clear. In the judiciary of the ruling regime in Iran, the judge is not formed within an independent professional system, but within an ideological and political apparatus. Law, executive regulations, the special track for seminarians, structural restrictions against women, formal training, the judicial oath, and disciplinary and security oversight together create a judicial body whose survival depends on loyalty, conformity, and submission to the logic of preserving the system. In this structure, professional diversity and judicial independence give way to ideological uniformity and continual control.
The issue, therefore, is not simply that judicial independence is restricted. It is that the judiciary has been organized from the beginning in such a way that it cannot serve, in any real sense, as a refuge for rights and justice. Even the most distinguished classically trained jurists remain excluded from the highest levels of judicial power unless they fit within the dominant ideological and religious framework. By contrast, the path is opened to those whose judicial legitimacy derives not from legal independence, but from alignment with the system of Velayat-e Faqih.
For that reason, the repressive conduct of Iran’s judiciary cannot be treated as an occasional deviation or merely the behavior of a handful of officials. It is the direct product of an institutional design that has, from the beginning, turned the judiciary into one of the most effective instruments for the survival of the ruling regime in Iran. The next chapter will show how this ideological judicial body operates in practice within the Revolutionary Courts and security prosecution offices, where it becomes an executive mechanism of judicial repression.
