The Challenges of Education and Research in the Field of Law in Iran and the Strategies to Address Them

During the past few years, the Iranian system of education and research in law has received severe changes, which have seriously damaged this system, and consequently have led to the decline of the Iranian legal system. Some such changes are not limited to law; rather, they are present in other fields of human sciences. This can be partially due to university instructors (e.g., how they are recruited, promoted, assigned various posts unrelated to academic affairs, etc.), as well as to the process of admitting university students (e.g., nationwide and centralized admission of university students which is done sometimes out of the regular rules, without entrance exams, and through admitting large numbers of students at postgraduate levels), and to educational methods (e.g., demand for memorizing huge quantities of materials, unfamiliarity of students with legal issues in practice, demand for high scores, etc.), or to research (insufficiency of original, fundamental studie