Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Comparative Study of the Statute of Limitations for Complaints across Various Legal Systems and Drawing Insights for the Iranian Law

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Soran Moradi 1
sadegh manti nejad 2
1 PhD Candidate in Criminal Law and Criminology, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran;
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Humanities, Payame Noor University, South Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran
10.22034/jclc.2025.450191.1991
Abstract
The statute of limitations for complaints, with roots in foreign legal systems, has a short history in Iranian law. The legal element of this institution faces defects that have engendered serious setbacks in its implementation in Iranian courts. A comparative study of this institution can be effective in eliminating these defects. This research, utilizing a descriptive-analytical method and comparative approach, examines the legal systems of England (from the common law system), Germany and Switzerland (from the civil law system), and Qatar, Egypt and Iraq (from the Islamic legal system) in this regard. The research is library-based and relies heavily on direct reference to legal texts and official portals of legislative institutions of these countries. The applied objective of this research is to identify the strengths of the legal systems under study and answer the question of whether they can be used to resolve ambiguities in the legal element of this institution in Iran. The research findings indicate that adopting from the laws of the studied countries in the following cases can be helpful in completing and strengthening Iran's law: clarifying the concept of knowledge and how to verify it, as well as adding the necessity of the victim's knowledge of the perpetrator's identity, in addition to knowledge of the crime occurrence for starting the limitation period; determining separate limitation periods for crimes according to their type, nature and consequences; providing for a follow-up period for the complaint, in addition to the filing period, transferring the statute of limitations for complaints from the limitation period section to the procedural timelines section and explicitly determining the law of the crime occurrence time as the governing law for determining the complaint filing period; using the phrase "person who has the right to complain" instead of "victim of the crime" and starting the complaint filing period for heirs from the time of knowledge of the crime occurrence or the demise of the deceased, whichever occurs later.
 
Keywords
Statute of Limitations
Doctrine of Laches
Knowledge of Crime Occurrence
Limitation Period for Complaints
Compoundable Crimes
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Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
Volume 13, Issue 25
August 2025
Pages 99-134