Ogleznev V.V., Didikin A.B. “Law in the Face of Changing Problems of the World” (Review of the XXXII IVR World Congress, June 28–July 3, 2026, Istanbul, Türkiye).

DOI: 10.51634/2307-5201_2026_3_119

УДК 17.03; 340.12

НАУЧНАЯ ЖИЗНЬ

V. Ogleznev, Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Professor, Higher School of Law, Maqsut Narikbayev University (Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan), e-mail: Адрес электронной почты защищен от спам-ботов. Для просмотра адреса в вашем браузере должен быть включен Javascript.

A. Didikin, Doctor of Philosophy, PhD in Law, Associate Professor, Higher School of Law, Maqsut Narikbayev University (Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan), e-mail: Адрес электронной почты защищен от спам-ботов. Для просмотра адреса в вашем браузере должен быть включен Javascript.

The XXXII World Congress of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR) took place at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Türkiye, from June 28 to July 3, 2026. Its theme was “Law in the Face of the Changing Problems of the World”. Founded in Germany in 1909, the worciation brings together scholars working in legal and social philosophy. Its World congresses provide an opportunity to present research and discuss developments in these fields with colleagues from different academic traditions.

The opening ceremony included addresses by IVR President Chinsuk Yoon, President of the Philosophical Society of Turkey Ioanna Kuçuradi, and representatives of Kadir Has University. Former IVR President Mortimer Sellers commemorated legal philosophers who had died since the previous congress in Seoul.

The programme included plenary lectures, special workshops, working group sessions, and round tables. Plenary speakers included Lea Ypi, who spoke on “How Capitalism Undermines Freedom”; José Medina, on “Silencing, Counter-Communities, and Kinds of Activism”; Claudio Michelon, on “Reclaiming Subjectivity in Legal Argumentation”; Dietmar von der Pfordten, on “Law as Mediation: A More Comprehensive Understanding of the Nature of Law”; and Stephen Macedo, on “Covid as State of Exception: How Our Institutions Failed Us”. Round tables addressed analytical legal philosophy, the development of legal philosophy in Türkiye, and the relationship between artificial intelligence and the legal order.

Maqsut Narikbayev University was represented by Vitaly Ogleznev and Anton Didikin. Both presented papers at the workshop “Prospects for Legal Realism”, which brought together scholars from Russia, Germany, and Serbia. Ogleznev’s paper, “Systematic Terms in Alf Ross’s Account of Legal Language”, examined the function of legal concepts such as ownership in connecting conditioning facts with legal consequences. He compared Ross’s account with Rudolf Carnap’s correspondence rules, focusing on how rules of use explain the meaning of terms in law and science. Didikin’s paper, “Can Metaphysical Realism be useful for justifying Legal Realism?”, addressed the relationship between metaphysical realism and legal realism. He argued that metaphysical realism can be useful by providing a semantic picture where legal terms (for example, “equality”, “punishment”) aim at real properties or classes of cases, even if our understanding is partial or contested. Metaphysical realism is useful wherever legal realism pushes law to pay attention to empirical sciences. In social and legal research it supports the claim that social structures and institutions have real properties that explain legal outcomes and should inform doctrinal development.

Ogleznev also participated in the workshop “The Performative Dimension of Legal Reasoning”, convened by Pablo Raúl Bonorino Ramírez of the University of Vigo. The English-language session included contributions by Joaquín Rodríguez-Toubes Muñíz on the prescriptive force of legal definitions, Alfonso García Figueroa on recognition and performative inconsistencies in legal and political discourse, Brisa Paim Duarte on visual evidence and the performative limits of legal reasoning, and Bonorino Ramírez on legal correctness and the proposal for a Constitution of the Earth.

In his paper “The Performative Force of Legal Ascriptives”, Ogleznev proposed distinguishing ascriptive speech acts within Searle’s classification. He argued that legal utterances such as “X is guilty” or “The contract is concluded” can ascribe a legal status and produce institutional consequences. The paper distinguished acts that establish a legal status from judicial acts that also determine the relevant facts, explaining how legal utterances combine factual findings with the attribution of responsibility, rights, or obligations.

Another workshop, “From Leibniz to the Digital Age: Logic, Law, and the Future of Legal Thought”, explored historical and contemporary uses of logic in law. Michal Araszkiewicz delivered a keynote on computational legal interpretation. Diogo Campos Sasdelli traced the history of logic and legal justification, while Mikhail Antonov examined the different meanings of “system” in legal thought. José Renato Gaziero Cella and Lia Loana Curial Oliva discussed deontic logic and artificial intelligence. Their second joint paper considered the Brazilian electronic judicial process through the lens of Kafka’s The Trial, questioning the growing reliance on quantitative measures of judicial performance. Cesar Serbena addressed the challenges that AI poses for legal evidence. Réka Markovich examined the logical modelling of judicial discretion, and Leandro Nascimento Mantau discussed the limits of algorithmic decision-making in criminal law.

Ogleznev presented “In What Sense Does Law Exist? Logical Form and Ontological Commitment in Legal Discourse”. Using examples involving legal persons and diplomatic immunity, he distinguished logical relations between legal propositions from the conditions under which legal entities exist. His argument was that the existence of rights, legal persons, and institutions cannot be established by logical form alone. It requires attention to conditions of application, institutional recognition, and validity within a normative practice.

Under the auspices of the Central Asian IVR section, established in 2025, Didikin organised the workshop “The Nature of Law and Legal Reality”. Speakers included Lorenz Kähler of the University of Bremen, Eckardt Buchholz-Schuster of Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and Sofya Koval of HSE University in Moscow. The discussion concerned the existence of law, the distinctive features of legal reality, and the main arguments of Kähler’s theory of the ontological ideality of law.

Didikin also presented the paper “A Neuroscientist in the Courtroom” at the workshop “Law and Ethics of Neuroscience and Emerging Neurotechnologies”, organised by colleagues from Turkish universities. He argued that the participation of a neuroscientist in court helps to increase the accuracy of justice by taking into account the latest scientific data about a person's condition at the time of the crime. However, the need to determine the legal status of a neuroscientist in the court process. The neuroscientist involved in the trial acts as a mediator between two different systems of reality description – the scientific and the legal – and translates the neuroscientific data into the language of law.

Didikin’s presentation reported findings from the research project “The Application of Neuroscientific Data in Jurisprudence”, conducted at Maqsut Narikbayev University during the 2025–2026 academic year. The workshop brought together researchers from the United States, Australia, and European countries.

Throughout the congress, working groups met to discuss questions in legal and social philosophy, legal theory, constitutional law, and international law. The IVR leadership also held a meeting of representatives of its regional sections. More than 1000 participants attended the congress, representing countries across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

The next IVR World Congress will take place in Paris in 2028. The journal Law and State will continue to publish information about the Association’s activities.