SUMMARY:

In the Russian Empire, a variety of legal traditions in the field of private law coexisted with a central and common element, known either as imperial civil law or “Russian” civil law. The specific regulations that were in force in territories before their incorporation into the empire and remained in force afterward were called “local laws” in the late imperial period. This article focuses on the emergence of the concept of “local laws” by studying the interactions between scholarly conceptions of civil law and official concerns for administrative and judicial work. It shows how the teaching of local laws was a matter of discussion within officialdom and between officials and legal scholars at the end of the nineteenth century. The imperial administration showed concern for the teaching of some local laws only on a very limited basis. In any event, this concern was not shared by legal scholars who wanted to maintain the primacy of Russian imperial law. These attitudes partially shifted as a consequence of the 1905 Revolution. Overall, the teaching of local laws never became a priority, even if the practical implications of the knowledge of local laws for administrative and judicial work were quite clearly identified. It is argued that this global attitude toward local laws is indicative of the way in which the making of legal knowledge was part of the management of the empire and shows the prevailing representations of diversity and unity, particularity and community, among both officials and legal scholars.