evaluating the effect of rural dispute settlement councils on the judicial security of the inhabitants: the case of marand district

one of the most important changes in the judicial system of iran was the establishment of dispute settlement councils in 1381. before this date, judgment and solving the disputes was being carried out only in official juridical centers. after establishing the councils, rural and urban communities welcomed those institutes that were in charge of judging some part of citizen’s problems. in this paper, we have tried to evaluate the function of those institutes and analyze the role of dispute settlement councils in obtaining juridical security for rural citizens. the present paper is a descriptive-analytic survey. the data was collected through a questionnaire. the sample consists of 15 villages of marand that benefit from consultation settlement of dispute. 200 people were selected by using cochran and proportional allocation models. 55 indices were evaluated as positive and negative components in juridical security of rural citizens. finally, a paired sample t test was used for analysis. the results show that there is a meaningful difference between the periods before and after establishment of the dispute settlement councils in most of the indices. therefore, despite some of the shortcomings, dispute settlement council is one of the effective institutes for expending the culture of peace in the society and maintaining the juridical security of the rural society.