Constitutional Reform in Iraq and Iran

The constitution in any state is a reflection of the political, social or economic conditions and conditions in which the state lives. Since these circumstances and conditions are subject to change in accordance with the law of development, it is necessary to keep pace with this development with a similar development in constitutions by amending them. The constitutionality of any country cannot reach the point of stability and its inability to change or amendment, no matter how keen the drafters of the constitution are, as the idea of absolute stalemate in constitutions is impossible to achieve in practice, meaning that this stagnation is relative even if it requires special procedures more severe than those followed In amending ordinary laws, the issue of amending the constitution is of great importance in the field of constitutional jurisprudence, because it embodies a legal and political necessity in all constitutional systems. Concern for the stability and guarantee of constitutional rules in written documents on the one hand, and the continuous, diversified and accelerating development in all areas of human and civilized life on the other hand, made the constitutional amendment a necessity. In Iran, for a period of ten years after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, and the ups and downs in the political, economic and social fields during this time, the need for a fundamental reconsideration of the country’s political structure and the constitution arose. And the constitution adopted in 1979 did not expect the revision of the constitution frankly. The legal implementation of the revision of the constitution required the approval of Imam Khomeini as the first leader of the revolution. In Iraq, the process of writing the Iraqi constitution for the year 2005 was not natural and harmonious, but was rather complicated and marred by many circumstances as a result of the circumstances that followed the American occupation and the resulting process of complete uprooting the previous power structures and the hegemony of Shiite and Kurdish forces over the new political system. The constitutional systems differed in determining the competent authority to amend some provisions of the constitution. And the differences in the Iraqi constitution and between the two mechanisms for changing its texts, the first is the mechanism that leads to a partial change in the constitution, and the second is a general change in the constitution, and this results in the definition of the competent authority that you propose. The change in both cases, by following the first mechanism, either by the executive or legislative authority, and the second mechanism is only by the legislative authority, and on the other hand the Iranian constitution allows the study of its texts open with the final approval of the leader and the people, the competent authority was announced, and when the analysis and comparison was done in studying the texts of the Iraqi constitution, an important problem was found related to the weak protection of the basic principles of the political system and in the rights and freedoms stipulated because it did not include permanent objective limits that do not allow the authority to change the constitution in a way that violates those Constitutional points, the Iranian constitution had a good base when the permanent purpose was within its limits.