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12 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 271 (2005-2006)
Why Is There No Russian Atticus Finch - Or Even a Russian Rumpole

handle is hein.journals/twlr12 and id is 279 raw text is: WHY IS THERE NO RUSSIAN ATTICUS FINCH? OR EVEN A RUSSIAN RUMPOLE? Michael Newcityt I. INTRODUCTION .......................................... 272 II. THE RUSSIAN LEGAL SYSTEM PRIOR TO 1864 .......... 273 III. THE OLD LEGAL SYSTEM IN LITERATURE .............. 275 IV. THE JUDICIAL REFORMS OF 1864 ....................... 278 V. LAWYERS, COURTS, AND JURIES IN LATE NINETEENTH- CENTURY LITERATURE ................................. 280 A . D ostoevsky .......................................... 280 B . Tolstoy .............................................. 283 VI. WHY IS THERE No RUSSIAN ATriCuS FINCH? OR EVEN A RUSSIAN RUMPOLE? ........................... 286 A . Experience .......................................... 288 B. Individual Versus the Collective ..................... 292 C. O rthodoxy .......................................... 292 D. Concluding Observations ............................ 301 The Law is like an axle-you can turn it whichever way you please, if you give it plenty of grease. Russian folk saying of the 19th century' But if... everything depends on the arbitrary will of the prosecutor and other persons who have the power to apply or not apply the law, what is the use of having law courts at all? Leo Tolstoy (1899)2 t Deputy Director, Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies, Duke University, J.D., M.A. (Russian Studies), The George Washington University, 1975, B.A. The George Washington University, 1972. 1. Benard Guilbert Guerney, A TREASURY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE 1048 (Ber- nard Guilbert Guerney ed., 1943). There is a rich selection of Russian folk sayings and proverbs expressing popular dissatisfaction with the legal system. Examples from before the judicial reforms of 1864 include the following: Stand up to God with truth, and to the judge with money and He went to Court with his coat on and came out stark naked. ANDREW GUERSHOON, CERTAIN ASPECTS OF RUSSIAN PROVERBS 111-12 (1941). As Andrew Guershoon concluded, These examples are so unequivo- cal and so drastic that no room for doubt is left. The courts had a very bad record, and must have been intensely hated by the poor people to have caused them to create and to preserve such proverbs. Id. at 112. For other similar folk sayings and prov- erbs about the tsarist Russian legal system, see 1 VLADIMIR IVANOVICH DAL', POS- LOVITSY RUSSKOGO NARODA: SBORNIK v DALIA V TREKH TOMAKH 473-74 (Russkaia Kniga 1993) (1862). 2. L.N. TOLSTOY, RESURRECTION 312 (Rosemary Edmonds trans., Penguin Books 1966) (1899).

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