From 15 to 20 August 2011 Frankfurt am Main hosted the XXV World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR). The Congress attracted leading representatives of the contemporary legal science and legal practitioners from over 50 countries.

The key topics of the Congress included, on the one hand, relations between law and ethics, and, on the other hand, those between science and technology. Intensive development of science and technology in recent decades has given rise to new challenges not only for specific areas of law (civil, constitutional, and criminal) but also for the related areas of legal theory. This is relevant to that part of the legal theory which relates to administration of justice, law efficiency as a social regulation instrument, and empirical conditions of legal responsibility. The focus was on discussions about whether legal principles could be properly adapted to new technological capabilities.

Vladislav Arkhipov, Associate at EPAM who had attended XXIV IVR Congress in Beijing, delivered two presentations. The first, entitled “Virtual Worlds in Legal Studies”, focused on virtual law and virtual property as well as the methodological potential of virtual worlds for jurisprudence. The second, entitled “Speaking about Law: General Fiction of Legal Theory” touched on the relations between legal theory and legal practice.