Judges of Empire

In 1862, Tsar Alexander II promulgated his arguably most progressive reform: the Judicial Reform. Lawyers and layfolk would be able to participate in oral, adversarial proceedings. The principle of “innocent until proven guilty” would become paramount. Judges would become immune to dismissal, even by the tsar, portending the advent of the rule of law. Yet in the Baltic provinces, today’s Estonia and Latvia, Baltic German noblemen and guild elites held exclusive privileges over a surprisingly advanced legal system. How would imperial officials apply reform to this region? Could an empire striving towards the rule of law successfully incorporate distinctive law and legal traditions? How would the local population, mostly Estonians and Latvians, respond to change? In this book, Patrick Monson shows that so-called conservatives advocate the inclusion of other languages and social groups in a more autonomous legal system. Putative progressives insist on the use of one language—Russian—for the state to administer unmediated justice. Russian judges deftly wield Baltic law to decide cases on shifting islands and latrines abutting a church. Yet despite valiant efforts, translators make frequent blunders. Estonian and Latvian peasants cunningly navigate complex, fluctuating legal cultures, eventually asserting independence in the midst of war and revolution.