Nikolay V. Storozhev (August 8, 1934 - August 9, 2004) corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Doctor of Legal Sciences, Professor, Honoured Lawyer of the Republic of Belarus

In such a situation when the national legal system is being formed in the Republic of Belarus, the prime importance is given to the tasks of scientific and theoretical backgrounds for forming civil society and for functioning of the constitutional state. Because effective legal regulation is constantly changing and public relations are becoming more complex, the establishment of legal order relevant to the level of development of the legal state and the formation of civil society can be successfully accomplished only by the elaboration and introduction to legal practice (legislative practice, systematization of legislation, law-enforcement and realization of legal relations) of scientifically grounded legal mechanisms. All this supposes the creation of a national scientific legal school.

The beginning of legal science development in Belarus, as an independent sphere of knowledge, is connected with the opening of the Belarusian State University in 1921 in Minsk and also with the creation of the Belarusian Culture Institute in 1929 – a prototype of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (further – the NAS of Belarus).

Prominent steps have been made in the development of legal science in the republic by V.I. Picheta (history of law), V.N. Durdenevsky (state law of bourgeois countries), G.S. Gurvich (socialist state law), B.V. Chredin (Rome Law), M.B. Krol (judicial psychiatry) and others. A chair of modern law, headed by M.O. Gredinger, has also been created in the Institute of Belarusian Culture. As a result, an association of academics and teachers focusing on legal topic research began its formation.

As far as a contemporary state of development of academic legal science is concerned, the urgent issues of the functioning of contemporary Belarusian society and state objectively stipulate the following main directions of scientific activity:

- studying the patterns of formation and development of the contemporary Belarusian state;

- researching of state legal forms of interaction of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of power;

- revealing the peculiarities of local government and self-government;

- studying the problems of comparative law; the unification of legislation within the Union of Belarus and Russia and the systematization and codification of legislation;

- analyzing the transformation of employer-employee relations and social guarantees of hired employees;

- researching legislation on scientific activity and ways it can be improved;

- researching the civil legislation system and the efficiency of its application;

- elaborating legal mechanisms for the reformation of agricultural enterprises and the provision of land and agricultural reform;

- researching legal issues: of rational nature management; protection of the environment; overcoming the consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant disaster and providing the ecological safety of population;

- studying ways of improving criminal, - and criminal procedure legislation and measures for combating organized crime and corruption;

- researching the legal aspects of the activity of the Republic of Belarus as an international relations entity;

- and studying urgent problems of the history of Belarus law and state.

So, hugely detailed and responsible work has to be done in order to solve the problems that are arising in the way of legal science development and creating conditions and prerequisites for its further development.

The activity of the Institute of State and Law of the NAS of Belarus is fully devoted to the fulfilment of the task. The Institute elaborates on the basis for the formation of the constitutional state and the principles of effective law enforcement within the State Program of Fundamental and Fundamentally Oriented Research for 2003-2005. The Institute is the head organization of the program and coordinates the work of research groups from the Belarusian State University, Grodno, Gomel, Brest and Polotsk universities.

With this, we should mention that the modern development of legal science in the Republic of Belarus comes along with the growing application of new information technologies in all spheres of society’s activity. Legal science cannot be set aside from such processes. Making this connection, we should say that the possibility to apply modern information technologies in scientific research, including those on the Internet, opens huge perspectives.