Legality and Justice in the Caucasus, 1850-1930

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Focusing on struggles over legislation, ‘legality’, and ‘justice’ in Russian imperial and Soviet Georgia, the panel explores the ways in which the legal sphere served as point of contact and negotiation between center and periphery, between different religious and national groups, and even within the same religious community. In criminal trials before and after the Judicial Reform (1864), in public struggles over new statutory laws (1892), and in debates and hearings about new Soviet laws and legal institutions in the 1920s, the panellists trace the evolving agency of Christian and Jewish Georgians, their multiple ties to Russia, and the ways in which the law could help to shape distinct local identities. In so doing, the panel also sheds light on the tension between persisting local diversity in the Caucasus and attempts to standardize laws, legal practice and institutions from the imperial center. The presenters draw on a wide range of archival sources, mostly from Tbilisi, along with local newspapers and journals, in a variety of languages (especially Georgian, Hebrew, and Russian).

Sub Unit

• History: 1800-1900

Chair

• Jane Burbank, New York U

Papers

• Blood Libel and Judicial Reform: Comparing the Surami (1850-54) and Kutaisi Trials (1878-80) - Stefan B. Kirmse, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Germany)

• Russian Imperial Law and Georgian Jewish Identity - Aaron M. Schimmel, Stanford U

• From Legal Ambiguity to Lawmaking: The Evolution of Courts in 1920s Soviet Georgia - Ketevan Sartania, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Germany)

Discussant

• Alexander Mikaberidze, Louisiana State U Shreveport