Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 PhD student in Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
2 Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Criminal res judicata is not merely a procedural rule designed to terminate a specific dispute; rather, it functions as an institutional mechanism for determining the optimal stopping point of prosecution and minimizing the total social cost of the criminal justice system. Within the framework of economic analysis of law, efficient finality is achieved when the expected marginal reduction in the cost of judicial error resulting from an additional unit increase in the probability of reopening proceedings is exactly equal to the marginal direct and institutional cost of such reopening. In other words, finality is economically efficient at the point where the marginal cost of re-litigation equals the marginal benefit of error correction. Total social cost may be understood as a function of three components: error costs (wrongful conviction or wrongful acquittal), re-litigation costs, and institutional uncertainty costs. Deviation from this equilibrium exposes the system to net increases in social cost, heightened institutional risk, and erosion of public trust in the finality of judicial decisions. Drawing upon the economic theory of public enforcement of law (Becker; Polinsky & Shavell), transaction cost theory (Coase), and the theory of credible institutional commitment (North), this article argues that the legislative design of criminal res judicata in Iranian law has failed to stabilize this optimal equilibrium due to the absence of a coherent “threshold-based institutional architecture” governing exceptions to finality.
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