International conference of PhD students and young researchers „The Interaction of National Legal Systems: Convergence or Divergence?“

On 25-26 April 2013, an international conference of PhD students and young researchers “The Interaction of National Legal Systems: Convergence or Divergence?” was held for the first time at Vilnius University Faculty of Law.

The idea of the conference was to invite PhD students and young researchers from Lithuania and foreign countries to participate in debates on the current events and trends of development of the interaction of national legal systems. Today, there is probably no doubt that the social relationships are increasingly overstepping the previous boundaries. Globalisation, development of regional markets, active migration, technical revolutions and many other postmodern factors have an impact on the interaction of states. Therefore, it is extremely relevant to analyse the trends in the changes of the interaction of the national legal systems. How strongly does the disappearance of the limits of social space stimulate the convergence of national legal systems in public and private law, in separate legal fields? Or perhaps it is the other way around: in certain fields, the opposite process of divergence is observed? These and other relevant questions were attempted to answer in the conference organised for PhD students and young researchers.

As one of the organisers and participants of the conference Donatas Murauskas said: “The exclusivity of the conference is first and foremost a diversity of PhD students and young researchers, since the researchers come from even 11 European states. It is also important to mention the scope of the conference: the variety of presentations is wide, however, every topic is connected by the attempt to search for the interaction of legal systems. The latitude of the topics and a large number of the participants in the conference (48 presentations) allowed to divide the conference into sections, therefore, every participant could follow the presentations related to his or her field of interest, for example, the criminal law, labour law, company law, etc. It is also important to note that the conference is aimed at discussing and promoting collaboration, hence, the essential and successfully accomplished task of organisers was the publication of the presentations before the conference. The pre-publication provided the participants with the possibility to learn the content of presentations and to prepare for debates. The purpose was to create most intense and respectful feedback to presenters.”