مهدی طاهری دلخوش

The Constitutional Revolution is of great importance regarding its direct impact on the political system and legal developments in contemporary Iran, as well as the changing relations between the rulers and the people. One of the important issues is the transformation in the position of the king and his rights, powers, and responsibilities in the legal sources of the constitutional era; with the focus of the constitutional revolutionaries on curbing despotism and ultimately drafting and promulgating the constitutional law and its supplements, efforts were made to separate the three branches of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers and prevent the concentration of power in the person of the king by establishing new institutions. However, a reflection on the process of political and legal transformations in the subsequent stages of the constitutional era until the Islamic Revolution reveals the crystallization and continuation of old despotism within the framework of the constitutional system, from the period of minor despotism to the Pahlavi era, where absolute rule of the king was not based on law but enforced through the law. Hence, considering that the philosophy behind the drafting of the constitutional law and its supplements fundamentally aimed to limit the despotism of the monarchy, while witnessing the reappearance and reproduction of despotism in the subsequent stages of the constitutional era until the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the question arises: ‘What role did the constitutional law and its principles play in the reproduction of despotism during the Pahlavi period?’ The present study aims to examine the hypothesis that with the infiltration of the monarchist movement, both overt and covert, in the drafting of the constitutional law and its supplements, the previous powers and authorities of the king were preserved in various principles of the constitutional law and its supplements, and under favorable conditions and based on these principles, the despotism of the monarchy was reproduced.