“To Judge by the Letter of the Law”: Сases Filed to Peasant Crown Courts in the Central Urals, 1780s-90s

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the question of Justiznutzung or uses of justice at Russian provincial courts during the 1780-1790-ies. Catherine II`s judicial reform (1775–1785) introduced an estate-based court system. For the first time in Russian history, positive law was extended to part of the peasantry. In districts with a high percentage (at least 30 %) of personally free rural dwellers, courts of first instance, so called nizhnye raspravy were opened, thus giving this population group the possibility to seek justice in a crown court. In the Perm vicegerency (1781–97), however, this opportunity was seldom exploited: criminal and civil cases constituted less than a fifth of court business per year. This contribution will not focus the “classic” question of whether peasant courts were frequented or ignored. Its aim is to concentrate on those situations and constellations when customary law failed to satisfy the plaintiff´s needs, leading to them appealing to the norms positive law and its institutions to receive a just decision. Most of the time, proceedings at a crown court opened ex officio. But this was not exclusively the case: court records kept in the state archive of the Sverdlovsk region show that the peasant commune regarded a conflict within its social context and only then decided whether to turn to the norms of positive law to restore justice. Given this, the low court activity at the nizhnye raspravy cannot be explained by the dualism of law and legal nihilism among the peasantry. It is more appropriate to speak of legal pluralism, the juxtaposition of several valid legal forms to whose norms people were free to turn. Copyright © 2022 by Cherkas Global University