Bulgarian IVR-section

The Bulgarian section of the IVR was established in the 1990s, following the democratization of the country. During this period, legal theory as a discipline for teaching fundamental legal knowledge rejected the previously mandatory prism of Marxist-Leninist legal science, and the teaching of the philosophy of law was restored in a number of Bulgarian law faculties.

A major contributor to these processes was the first chair of the Bulgarian section, Prof. Neno Nenovski (1934–2004), a professor at Sofia University and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, a researcher of various contemporary trends in Western legal science, and a member of the first composition of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court (1991–1994). He left a lasting scholarly legacy related to the topics of continuity in law and the interaction between the state and law.

After the death of Prof. Nenovski, the long-standing doyen of Bulgarian philosophy of law, Prof. Georgi Boychev (1936–2020), became chair of the section. The name of Prof. Boychev is associated with the creation of numerous scholarly studies in the field of scientific methodology, legal sanctions, offences, and legal liability, as well as educational publications on the philosophy of law and the development of an original concept in the field of legal institutionalism.

The activity of the Bulgarian national section was re-established after a brief interruption in early 2026, with the participation of scholars—lawyers and philosophers—from Sofia University and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, New Bulgarian University, the University of National and World Economy, and Veliko Tarnovo University.