Note: In the sixty-second session of “Method on Sundays,” Hujjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin Dr. Morteza Fayyaz, emphasizing the theoretical gap in law interpretation, raised the necessity of compiling independent and coherent principles and critiqued the unprincipled application of the principles of jurisprudence to legal texts. By introducing the three main schools of law interpretation, he emphasized the differences between human and divine legislators.

Hujjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin Arasta, as the critic, pointed to the breadth of the concept of law interpretation and emphasized the need to revisit key concepts including ambiguity, vagueness, removing restrictions, conflict, and resolving silence. This session represents an important step toward enhancing scientific understanding and a more precise methodology for law interpretation in Iran.

According to the news portal of the Research Institute for Contemporary Jurisprudence, the sixty-second session of “Method on Sundays” (autumn series) was held with good participation from attendees, both in-person and online.

At the beginning of the session, the moderator Hujjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin Haqqani Fazl, while welcoming the participants, noted: The “Method on Sundays” sessions, aimed at deepening methodological discussions in the field of jurisprudence and Islamic law, are regularly held by the Research Institute for Contemporary Jurisprudence Studies with the support of the Office for Development and Empowerment of Islamic Sciences at the Office of Islamic Propagation and in collaboration with the Jurisprudence and Law Group at the Islamic Research Center of the Parliament. The central theme for autumn 2025 has been announced as the “Series of Sessions on the Methodology of Legislative Governance Based on Sharia Standards.”

The director of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Jurisprudence, referring to the session’s topic “Methodology of Law Interpretation,” invited Hujjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin Dr. Morteza Fayyaz, a researcher in legislative jurisprudence, to present his discussion.

Dr. Morteza Fayyaz, dissecting the existing challenges in the process of law interpretation, pointed to the necessity of compiling independent and coherent principles for interpreting legal texts.

Hujjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin Fayyaz, while appreciating the session organizers, noted: “One of my long-standing concerns is that the literature on law interpretation in our legal texts is very faint, and this important topic has not been addressed as it should be.”

He defined law interpretation as the process of “removing ambiguity from legal text” and emphasized that this process becomes relevant when the legal text is ambiguous or vague.

The researcher in legislative jurisprudence, referring to the theoretical gap in this area, added: “Currently, we lack coherent principles for law interpretation, which is why we resort to methods from the principles of jurisprudence in practice, while these methods sometimes lead to errors in understanding the law instead of being effective.”

Dr. Fayyaz proceeded to introduce the three main schools in law interpretation:

• The literal or analytical interpretation school, which emphasizes the legislator’s intent and the apparent wording;
• The historical interpretation school, which considers the spirit of society and the historical context of law enactment important;
• The school of free scientific inquiry, which draws on social sciences in addition to custom and fairness.

He also enumerated methods of law interpretation such as expansive, restrictive, historical, logical, and principled interpretations, and explained their differences in the practice of interpreting legal texts.

Hujjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin Fayyaz, in another part of his remarks, citing concrete examples from laws such as the “Islamic Penal Code” and the “Anti-Narcotics Law,” addressed challenges arising from the unprincipled application of the principles of jurisprudence to law. In this regard, he stated: “We cannot directly apply the rules of the principles of jurisprudence, which are aimed at discovering the intent of the sacred Lawgiver, to legal texts without considering the nature of law. This leads the law interpreter to incorrect equivalences.”

In this scientific session, the presenter, referring to the views of Mr. Katouzian, a prominent law professor, conducted a deeper analysis of the concepts of justice and preferences in law interpretation. He emphasized that in the process of law interpretation, justice is one of the important preferences but should not be relied upon solely; other preferences and criteria must also be considered.

Referring to Mr. Katouzian’s reflections, he noted that legal preferences include a set of rules and criteria that are not limited to justice alone, and in many cases, legal conflicts and disputes are more complex than can be resolved with a simple criterion.

Additionally, the presenter emphasized the need to distinguish between sharia laws and civil laws, adding: Many of the laws in force in the country have not undergone the process of becoming sharia-compliant, so they cannot be interpreted using the same sharia criteria. In this context, referring to the hadith of Imam Sadiq (peace be upon him), “If two hadiths reach you” regarding conflicting evidence and the limitations of applying this hadith in the legal system, he raised the point that jurisprudential principles and rules are not fully applicable to civil and administrative laws.

One of the important axes of the discussion was the distinction between the principles of jurisprudence and the principles of law interpretation. Dr. Fayyaz emphasized that the tools used in the principles of jurisprudence face limitations in the legislative domain and must be revisited. He stated: “The acquittal raised in the principles of jurisprudence is essentially aimed at apparent rulings and removing caution, whereas acquittal in law has a real ruling and cannot simply be reduced to principled acquittal.”

Dr. Fayyaz concluded his remarks by offering suggestions for compiling a “systematic methodology for law interpretation,” noting that this requires in-depth comparative research between the principles of jurisprudence and the needs of the modern legal system.

He emphasized: “Just as in the field of jurisprudence, the principles of jurisprudence have been compiled to understand religious texts, we also need indigenous and refined principles for law interpretation that can precisely clarify the legislator’s intent and prevent confusion in the process of judgment and adjudication.”

In this session, Dr. Fayyaz examined the possibility and scope of using the rules of the principles of jurisprudence in the process of interpreting secular laws and sought to demonstrate that in some cases, this application may lead to errors in understanding the law.

Following this presentation, Hujjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin Arasta, a faculty member at the University of Tehran, as the session’s critic, presented his detailed and structural critiques of the raised discussions.

At the beginning of his remarks, while appreciating the topic, he stated: “The attention to whether the principles of jurisprudence are applicable in law interpretation deserves praise.”

One of Arasta’s key critiques related to the distinction between ambiguity, vagueness, conflict, complexity, and silence in law. The faculty member at the University of Tehran, pointing out that law interpretation is not solely about removing ambiguity, said: “Law interpretation, in one sense, means removing the veil from ambiguity, but sometimes it is for resolving vagueness, conflict, complexity, and even silence in law; therefore, the definition of interpretation should not be limited to removing ambiguity.”

The faculty member at the University of Tehran, in another part of his remarks, referring to Dr. Fayyaz’s example regarding customary reconciliation between general and specific in law, asserted that the criterion for connection or disconnection between general and specific depends on the instance, and the related principled rule still applies in interpreting secular laws: “In the principles of jurisprudence, where this criterion is raised, it is applicable in law with the same quality; only the identification of the instance falls to the legal scholar.”

He also aligned Dr. Katouzian’s view on prioritizing materials due to proximity to justice with principled rules and considered it explainable based on concepts such as conformity with the Quran or the spirit governing it. In this regard, he referred to a quote from Ayatollah Sistani, emphasizing that conformity with the Quran means conformity with its governing spirit, namely justice.

Hujjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin Arasta, while distinguishing between the principle of acquittal as a principle in the constitution and a practical principle in jurisprudence, emphasized that expansive interpretation of acquittal in law should not be conflated with jurisprudential concepts. He added that the principle of acquittal in the constitution is a type of overarching general rule and is not necessarily a practical principle in the sense of the principles of jurisprudence.

At the end, Hujjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin Arasta, a faculty member at the University of Tehran, referred to another important point in Dr. Fayyaz’s presentation regarding “negligence in the stage of establishment” by the secular legislator. While confirming the importance of this discussion, he stated that even in the case of negligence in the stage of establishment, one can derive generality from the law by relying on “clarifying the rationale” or “discarding customary specificity,” and there is no need to outright reject this possibility.

In continuation, the session concluded with questions raised by the attendees and responses from Dr. Fayyaz and the critic, and it was decided to pursue the continuation of this discussion in future sessions.