Revolutionaries, Constitutionalism, and the Courts after the Great Reforms

• In Event: Law and Legality I: Crime and the Courts in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union

Abstract

The revolutionary movement in the reign of Alexander II emerged in the simmering legal and constitutional crisis precipitated by the Great Reforms of the 1860s. An independent judiciary and trial by jury now co-existed with the state’s persistent use of extra-judicial powers emanating from the tsar. The paper will show how, as the autocracy prosecuted hundreds of radicals for crimes large and small, the courts became a central venue for a wider public argument about the nature of rights and sovereignty in the Russian Empire. In the dock, the revolutionaries cast themselves as defenders of the rule of law, arguing that their legitimate political aspirations had been thwarted by a repressive state which violated their inalienable rights. In court, revolution became a constitutional project.

Author

• Daniel Beer, Royal Holloway, U of London (UK)