Abstract:

This article reconsiders the role of judicial precedent in Romano-Germanic legal systems with special emphasis on Iran. The central problem is how judges in codified systems evolve from being “mouthpieces of the law” to active interpreters and co-constructors of legal meaning, and what implications this transformation has for legitimacy, rationality, and the identity of law. The study employs a philosophical–analytical and comparative methodology. It first examines theoretical literature in the philosophy of law and doctrinal analysis of landmark judgments in France, Germany, and Italy to trace the historical and institutional development of judicial precedent. It then applies a comparative lens to assess the Iranian legal system, which combines Islamic jurisprudential heritage with modern statutory law. The findings reveal that in Romano-Germanic jurisdictions, despite the primacy of codification, judicial precedent has gradually emerged as an influential source of interpretation and norm-generation, drawing legitimacy from institutionalized reasoning and collective judicial memory. In Iran, by contrast, the coexistence of ijtihād and codified statutes has placed precedent in a state of conceptual suspension, yet recent practices such as unifying decisions of the Supreme Court and advisory opinions of the Judiciary’s Legal Department indicate the gradual formation of a precedential rationality. The article concludes that consolidating judicial precedent in Iran requires strengthening legal databases and transparency, fostering cooperation between academia and the judiciary, and philosophically rethinking the balance between individual reasoning and collective rationality.