Abstract

Greek philosophers had accepted “rule of law” as desired governance system since it was the only way to provide all citizens’ public interest. In today’s societies where public policy is accountable for the interests of total society or at least its majority, it is too vital to recognize the concept of public interest. Like other concepts, it is also radically transformed in modern age, despite varied perceptions on this concept, modern concept of public interest is understood as recognizing individual rights, accepting utility principle which means to attract the highest interest for most people, respecting legal process and adapting with common values of society independent of individual interests.

Criminal procedure is shaped in three main areas including criminal process, entities and its governing laws affected by public interest concept. Regulations such as competencies and penal provisional remedy, entities like the public prosecutor’s office and NGOs and criminal process models like crime control are all justified by this concept. In present paper, it is attempted to adapt such claim to Iranian procedural rights by some illuminations.

One can claim that criminal procedure is one of the most obvious arenas of public interest where individual rights and freedoms clash. Since criminal procedure is set to provide public interest like many other laws, it also supports individual rights. Such rights include both procedural and substantial rights. On this basis, criminal procedure aims at achieving a balance point between public interest and individual interest. Here, we study the challenge of four rights supported by criminal procedure on public interest in Iranian laws.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.