A Feasibility Study of the "Right to Education" as a Basis for Criminal Liability

Man is a social being, and social life cannot endure without the enforcement of regulations and laws by the government. By assuming abnormal behaviors as criminal, criminal laws seek to protect social values. Disobeying criminal laws will lead to punishment, the most intense form of guarantee possible for the enforcement of laws. As rights and responsibilities are interdependent and correlative, committal to the observance of laws must come with rights for members of the society. Without sociability, awareness of rules and respect for the rights of others, being responsible for obeying laws and rules will be a mere one-way street. One of the human rights which serves as the basis for criminal liability and plays a fundamental role in empowering humans, awareness of rights and responsibilities, sociability, and tolerance is education. The main aim of the present research is to examine the effect of the right to education as a fundamental right upon balanced criminal liability and whether its absence or lack can influence criminal liability or the deserving of punishment. A library research, this study has taken a document-based approach, making use of books, articles, domestic rules as well as international documents on the right to education in a reasoning-based, analytical-descriptive fashion. This applied research can pave the way for legislators to pay more attention to education when it comes to criminal liability. The findings indicate that even though the right to education has been advocated constitutionally, Iran's criminal laws have paid no attention to its effect as a basis for criminal liability, and no defense has been provided for the absence of lack of the right to education.