Andrey V. Polyakov in Search of the Nature of Law: The 70th Anniversary of the Founder of Post-Classical Communicative Theory of Law

On December 12, 2024, the remarkable theorist of law, the author of the post-classical communicative theory of law, and professor of the Department of Theory and History of Law and the State of St. Petersburg State University, Andrey V. Polyakov celebrated his 70th birthday. This article outlines the key milestones of his creative journey. A. V. Polyakov began his career as a historian of political and legal doctrines and is rightfully regarded as one of the foremost experts on the works by L. I. Petrazhitsky, V. S. Solovyov, P. I. Novgorodtsev, and other pre-revolutionary domestic classics. Their ideas largely led A. V. Polyakov to interpret legal communication as the foundation of legal reality and the principle of mutual legal recognition of rights and duties as an essential characteristic of law. Several years ago, a «naturalistic turn» took place in Polyakov’s work, which is intended to give greater scientificity to his post-classical communicative theory of law. Based on the data of neurosciences and evolutionary biology, Andrey Polyakov demonstrates that legal communication and the principle of mutual legal recognition have biological prerequisites that are found today in the brain neural processes. This does not reduce behavior and law to biology, but gives grounds for the convergence of jurisprudence with natural science. This naturalistic research program in the study of law is today, according to A. V. Polyakov, supplemented by the communicative anthropology of law. Although explicating the nature of law within such a naturalistic framework presents considerable challenges — particularly the need to resolve the problem of the complementarity between physical processes occurring in the human brain and the mental phenomena that constitute the self — its prospects cannot be dismissed. In congratulating A. V. Polyakov on his anniversary, I am confident that his inquiries into the nature of law will continue to enrich the scholarly community.

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