Rights

.It is apt and usual to cogitate and ratiocinate man and human rights; it is less so about or with (other) animal rights; and much more less and lesser so with/about “plant rights” and (possibly) the rights of cloned/the artificially intelligent agents’. This condition is unfair and not ideal because man, other animals, plants, and other human manipulations (AI) from nature constitute varying levels of being; therefore, they possess varying levels of rights. Hence there is need to espouse the nature/levels of being, on the one hand, and to adumbrate the nature/types of rights and as related to being as such—which is the imperative of this article. Dwelling on the cornucopia of literature/and common biological (and other) features in nature as basis for analysis, this article, first, seeks to establish that man, other animals, plants, and other human manipulations from nature constitute varying levels of being; and second, argues that each level of being as such possesses some rights associated with it. It argues further that either all beings have rights, or they don’t. The work concludes that if one accepts that all the levels of being possess rights (accordingly including plant, cloned and AI agents), then one has certain obligation to all levels of being; but accepting either poses the most existential and ontological threat to humanity and all of nature.

Stability and instability of family, as the most important and fundamental social organ, has significant effect on the destiny of a society. The increasing rate of divorce, including legal or emotional ones, is a major social dilemma where the role of family cannot be ignored in fixing it. This is a problem that can be solved by altering the approach of lawmakers i.e. an approach based on 'Consolidation Principle' leads to the stability of family. In other words, this as a general legal principle has been in line with the Sharia law. Based on this principle, whatever causes the family stability is accepted and is in accordance with the religious decree and whatever leads to instability and shakiness of the family foundation is hateful and unaccepted. The consolidation principle is based on rationality, expediency, notoriety and necessity. Similarly, this principle, in clerical way from accessories to totalities, is based on the holy Qur’an and Islamic Traditions.

The main issue presented in this article, which is going to review the rights to a healthy environment and the prohibition of air pollution, in particular dust, now has become an issue that needs national solidity and regional interactions for a solution; and to enable the decrease of the pollution for the affected countries as well. Dust is a phenomenon that is the result of an environmental crisis. The absence of international rules, as well as uncertainty in states’ obligations toward each other, have complicated this crisis on the regional and international levels. The main goal of this article is first, recognizing the Customary and general principles that are existing in Iranian laws to arrange regional programs to decrease and diminish the dust phenomenon. Second, the article intends to raise sensitivity in people toward the critical and dangerous conditions of environmental pollutions. Third, it is going to lay legal and executive grounds to increase the local institutions and international organizations’ responsibilities for such issues. However, the main question in this article, with descriptive-analytical approach, is: in the absence of binding and identified international and regional obligations regarding dust, in what ways affected governments could protect the right to a healthy environment for their citizens? Based on this question, one can conclude that even though the affected governments do not maintain reciprocating conventions, the international customary law and local legal general principles of those countries conform to the governments’ obligation; and suggest that they take action against any harm, in particular, the environmental irreparable harm to their citizens. 

Skepticism and fear caused serious flaws in liberalism. Skepticism made liberalism resort to reason as an Archimedean point for resolving disagreements. But reason like opinions and affections is subject to social contingencies. Liberal fear of human nature has led it to a negative notion of rights that is harmful to social solidarity. Islam can help liberalism resolve these problems

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.