A Review of Parliamentary Privilege with an Approach to Iranian Legal System

The necessity of immunity of parliament and its Members has led to determine and assure particular privilege in the Constitutions or ordinary laws in the great majority of countries. This legal institution is to provide freedom of speech and to maintain the independence of representatives in the exercise of their duties without undue interference or fear. To define and justify the necessity of it, different theories like the prestige of representatives\u27 legal personality and doctrine of necessity have been introduced. The legal supports, which observe the parliamentary privilege, can be generally studied in two categories with distinct descriptions and effects; first, demonstrates the benefits and utilization of privilege by the representatives before their statements, opinions and the votes cast in the exercise of their functions, which is idiomatically the principle of nonـ liability . Second, it supports the Members of Parliament (MPs) before legal prosecution, arrest, imprisonment and the rest judicial measures, unless by the permission and allowance of the respective Parliament, because of irrelevant exercises and extralegal parliamentary acts and prevents the possibility of immediate prosecution of MPs because of the attributed crimes. This kind of immunity, which practically is the logical trailer of the non - liability principle of representatives before their parliamentary duties, is named the principle of inviolability . The stand of every country in relation to the various forms of parliamentary privilege is a little bit different. In certain countries, one of these two forms is accepted and in other countries both of them are accepted to guarantee the whole immunity of MPs. The first approach is called solo and the second one is called integrative, respectively. In Iran, the first approach depended on the nonـliability of representatives because of their statements, has been accepted in Article 86 of Constitution. The accuracy of this acceptance from the dynamic Fiqh\u27s (Jurisprudence) point of view is approvable and the expediencies and accidental necessities require going along with the rest of countries, which accepted the principle of parliamentary privilege