History

Iranian History has experienced transitions from last few decades. There have been various studies to understand change in different historical aspects. However, the studies on transition of court system from the Shah have been limited in previous studies. Most of the studies focused on the role of military or religious aspects of the transition. The political perspectives of the same issues has been least explored.
 This proposal provides insights on the Iranian history and transition of the court system from Shah Regime to Khomeinis regime.

Literature Review
There are plenty of literatures available on Shah and the changes he had incorporated in the judicial system of Iran. The legal reforms have been considered as experiments of Shah in order to incorporate secular changes and have fixed written laws in the judicial system. The implications of the abolishment of monarchy or decline of Shah has been considered as revolutionary moment at one point of time has been considered as a moment which led Iran to retrogressive growth and bought 2500 years back in the timeline ( Esfandiari, 2004). According to Laqueur (1979) the Islamic clergy viewed reforms initiated under the regime of Shah as the measures of abominating the positions given by Islam from more than a thousand years. The major reforms like agrarian reform, reforms concerning to the status of woman in the society and the role of religious court had direct impact on the status of clergy from the grass root levels of the society (Algar, 1981 Alam and Alikhani, 1991 Abghari, 2008). These reforms had been considered as threats by Khomeini. The White Revolution of 1963 was regarded as work of the devil and condemned by the Muslim clergy (Algar, 1981). The era of 1970s started with witnessing growing power of Shah and ironic growth and developments in Iran. The resilience handling during the regime of Shah has gone wrong where government under Shah responded by mass arrests, torture and to extreme end executions of the political prisoners. The number of political prisoners has been claimed to be nearly 20,000 whereas Shah admitted it to be only three thousand. The imposition of Shah within international media was not favourable during this period (Laqueur, 1979).
There are various reasons given to the failure of Shahs regime starting from the blame of being tool of the western power to the inability to bring his image as a Nationalist or patriotic leader. However, Shah had worked on the basic reforms that could lead the country to the progressive growth. Laqueur (1979) argues The Shahs critics decry his authoritarianism, but there is scarcely a liberal tradition in Iranian history. The economic and social freedoms enjoyed during the regime of Shah are some of the very basic aspects of life that Iranians witnessing Shahs exile and young Iranian want in their life. The things have changed to a large extent from Shahs regime to the Khomeini regime. These changes have never been an overnight changes. These started with the period of Shahs regime and continued till today.

There have been certain historical incidences in Iran that allowed the exiled Khomeini to take advantage and start his autocratic reign. There have been certain drawbacks in the regime of Shah, like any other ruler. Nevertheless Shah was involved himself in almost all activities he considered to be utmost important at that particular time. Shah has focused on the social issues, womans rights, development of a secular state where people have right to use their family name, they have right to behave according to their religion and live accordingly.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a democratic country and the supreme authority is vested to one person. The democratic society allows everyone to participate equally in the formation of government which is not in the case of Islamic republic.

There have been various studies that recognised the reforms and developmental work during the Shah regime (Amuzegar, 1991, Bayat, 1991, Abrahamian, 2008). The contribution of Shah has been in every sphere of economic and social life of Iranian like basic education, woman rights and empowerment, development of infrastructure, resolving the conflicts with neighbours, and judicial reforms (Lambton, 1994). As a reformist he could vision for the future of Iran, however as a politician he failed. He could not sense the rebellion activities by the exiled Khomeini. There have been studies to understand the reasons of political failures of the Shah. There have been studies to understand the changes of the pre-Islamic period and period following the Islamic clergy (Chehabi, 1990 Ghani, 2000 Cronin 2003). These studies include the legislative reforms resulting to the present court system of Iran and role of Islam in the Iranian judicial and constitutional system. The historical aspects of these reforms have been lacking (Abghari, 2008, Cambridge University Press, Daniel, 2000). Most of the contributions in the recent pasts have focused on the Human rights issues in Iran. The reason of the same has been continuous violations of the human rights, womans rights and children rights.
The political and constitutional power of Islamic Republic of Iran gives the supreme right to the Leader who supervises all the other state organs (Abghari, 2008). The lack of clarity of the power distribution, ambiguous role of legislative authorities and supremacy of an individual over all the judiciary branches has been touched in different literatures in different ways (Kurzam, 1995, Kinzer, 2003, Abghari, 2008)

The court system under Shah was developing to a democratic legislative system. This had been overpowered by the current supreme authority of the leader under Khomeini regime. Some authors argued that there were more than the religious and reform factors resulting to the decline of Shah. Amuzegar (1991) argued that Irans increasing political power and ability of Shah to influence the prices of oil were not with the interest of Western countries. Influenced by the Shahs own account of the revolution, an uncommonly large segment of Iranian exile communities insist that one or more foreign countries including the United States, Great Britain,

The Soviet Union, France and Israel were involved in managing the Shahs ouster. This conviction in the complicity of foreign powers is so strong and entrenched that any alleged motive no matter how farfetched and any circumstantial evidence no matter how flimsy is readily accepted as fact. (Amuzegar, 199179)
The legislative reforms are the initial signs of change in the judiciary and social system. The legislative reforms lead to institutional changes that are one of the cost centres for any country. The impact of reforms is long term. These reforms are considered successful if it leads to an equilibrium that definitely lacks in the present (Sicker, 2000). In Iran military power is being used for suppressing the political unrest. The political stability has not been achieved (Kazemi, 1980 Lambton, 1991, Mafinezam and Megrabi, 2008). The implications on the various aspects of social and economic development are evident.
 
Research Aims and Objectives
This study focuses on comparative analysis of the court under Shahs regime and developing and understanding of the changes in the court system under the Shahs regime to Khomeinis regime.

Objectives
The first objective of this study is to understand the Court and its functioning under Shahs regime. The second objective is to explore the interrelationship of the developmental reforms, court system and perceptions of the people at the high levels of the Shahs court. The next objective would be to study the present court system on three perspectives of history, economic and social changes and development. The comparative analysis of the court systems will be the fourth objective. The fifth objective of the study is to determine the factors of the history that supported the growth and development of the present court system. The sixth objective will be to estimate the factors of the present court system that can be the part of history of Iran for the future. The next objective is to differentiate the decision making process, involvement of the court and members of the judiciary system in the decision making process in these two regimes. The last objective will be to determine the common factors of these two regimes before, during and after the revolutionary change that took place during 1970s.

Research Methodology
The research will be based on primary research and critical discourse analysis. The primary research will be based on questionnaire led interviews. The critical discourse analysis will be analysis of content of the major newspaper and other publications.

Critical Discourse analysis
This analysis allows understanding the conversation or talk with respect to the structure of the social and political context of a given scenario. This analysis allows understanding the power relations in the historical context (Wodak and Meyer, 2001).

The critical discourse analysis will be conducted on two types of secondary sources available
Harvard Iranian Oral History material

Presentation of the Court system on Iran from 1947-till date in the leading Iranian and international publications and media.

Primary Research
This will be conducted in the form of qualitative research based on the set of questions on the Court System during Shah regime and Khomeinis Regime. The response will be collected from the former members of the Court of Shah (if available and with permission), historians, academicians and political figures. This qualitative research will be analysed further in order to develop a qualitative analysis for the perception about the courts in two regimes.

Appropriateness of the Research Methods
The research methods are appropriate with respect to research goal and objectives. The discourse analysis will help in understanding the transition of one court system to other and compare different political aspects of the process. The primary research will allow sharing the thoughts and perceptions regarding the two court systems this will lead us to answer the research questions.

Reflection
The Shah regime and its decline has been one of the most important aspects of history of Iran. The findings of this study will allow understanding the differences of court system. There have been limited studies conducted for the Shahs court and cabinet system. In such scenario, this study this study will be a small but significant.