Scientific Conference

The Scientific Conference on the Occasion of the Day of the Faculty of Law

Comprehensive and systematic scientific and research work at the Faculty of Law of the University in East Sarajevo began in 2010 when the Faculty decided to regularly organize a Scientific conference on the Occasion of the Day of the Faculty of Law. The Conference is organized on the weekend around 31 October – the day of St. Peter of Cetinje, one of the most prominent Serbian lawmakers, which has been proclaimed as the Day of the Faculty of Law. It was decided that each year, one broad topic should be selected that is both current and significant for the development of legal science in general. This Conference contributes to the development of an astute legal community which, rather than divided by different issues, will be closely tied by the awareness of the urgent need to foster different values in law, from fundamental ones to those ingrained in various legal technicalities. Conference participation is by invitation only. 

Scientific Conference on the occasion of the Day of the Faculty of Law was held 13 times – in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. The Conference is held around the same time each year and follows the concept established in 2010. The XIII Scientific Conference on the Occasion of The Day of the Faculty of Law was held on 26 October 2024 on the general topic “Law Between Protection and Abuse“. The Conference was attended by 240 participants from 26 countries from five continents (Greece, Russia, India, China, Italy, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Peru, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, Georgia, Sweden, Malta, Slovakia, Vietnam, Albania, Serbia, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina – Republic of Srpska and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina), who presented 192 papers in Serbian, Russian, English, Italian, or the native language of the participant. The Program of the Conference and Collection of Abstracts can be found by following links for the respective documents.

In terms of the number of authors, countries they come from, number of papers and number and reputation of the co-organizers, the Scientific Conference on the Occasion of the Day of the Faculty of Law is the largest legal conference held in 2024 in the Europe.

The thirteen conferences held thus far yielded almost 1200 academic papers authored and co-authored by legal scholars from around thirty countries from five continents (Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Africa). Proceedings from twelve previous Conferences comprise 800 academic papers published in 24 volumes on 13,000 pages. Proceedings from the XIII Conference will be published in at least five volumes. All the Conference Proceedings are indexed in HeinOnline, EBSCO OPEN ACCESS and Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL) journals and e-books databases.

Scientific Conference on the Occasion of the Day of the Faculty of Law has been classified by the Ministry of Scientific and Technological Development and Higher Education of the Republic of Srpska as an international conference of special significance of the first category. Our scientific Conference is one of the top three highest-classified conferences in the country in all legal fields and the top one in the field of social sciences and humanities. This classification and categorization was awarded to the X, XI, XII and XIII Scientific Conferences on the Occasion of the Day of the Faculty of Law held in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. The Conferences organized in 2019 and 2020 were classified and categorized as international conference of the first category and were evaluated as the best conferences in the field of social and humanistic sciences of their respective years.

Since 2019, two international institutions have joined the Faculty of Law of the University in East Sarajevo in organizing the Scientific Conference on the Occasion of the Day of the Faculty of Law: the International Union of Lawyers and the Serbian Association for Legal Theory and Practice. In 2020, the Institute of Criminological & Sociological Research joined as another coorganizer. Since 2021, the Scientific Conference has featured two more coorganizers – the European Public Law Organization and the Institute of Comparative Law. Officials and members of the said associations and institutions are members of the Scientific Board and Organizing Board of the Conference and present their papers at the Conference regularly. These organizations will undoubtedly contribute to the Conference with their decades-long experience in organizing scientific meetings.

The Scientific Board comprises renowned scholars from 12 countries (Russia, Greece, Hungary, Turkey, United Kingdom, Belgium, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) who published ISI journal papers related to the topic of the Conference. One board member is a former judge of the International Tribunal in Hague. Other members are full-time professors and associate professors, many of whom are current and former deans and vice deans of law schools in the region.

The organizational concept of the Scientific Conference on the Occasion of the Day of the Faculty of Law is such that abstracts are published in the Collection of Abstracts before the Conference, and the academic papers are published in the Proceedings from the Conference after it has been held. Both the Collection of Abstracts and the Conference Proceedings are published in the languages of the Conference and the languages in which the papers are presented, and they meet international library standards (CIP, ISBN. UDK, library analytics and electronic version). Papers published in conference proceedings are grouped by specific themes.

Scientific articles submitted for the Conference are subject to a written peer review assessing 1) the originality and categorization of a paper, 2) its coherence (abstract, introduction, methodology, argumentation and bibliography) and 3) its consistency with the Conference topic. Papers are presented publicly and are defended in discussion sessions. Peer reviewers are selected from among scholars with an academic rank no lower than assistant professor or research associate. Most of the peer reviewers, however, are full-time and associate professors. For the task of peer review of the papers published in conference proceedings so far, over 350 renowned peer reviewers from ten European countries have been engaged. 

All peer reviews are carried out anonymously in a double-blind manner. Each paper undergoes at least two peer reviews, with at least one peer reviewer coming from a state other than the author.

Further information on Scientific Conferences held so far, as well as Conference Proceedings, can be found on our website.