Due Process and Equal Justice in the Muscovite Codes

D id the Muscovite tsardom develop the idea that the state must follow due process? Did Muscovite codes contain the concept that the law should apply equally to all the tsar's subjects? Surprisingly, by the time of the Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, Muscovite law had developed elaborate concepts of procedural regularity and in both civil and criminal cases. The post-Enlightenment concepts of fundamental rights and constitutional guarantees would of course be alien to Muscovite legal thinking. But Medieval and Muscovite Russian legal documents include statements that shall be (rasprava byla . . . rovna), that a proper trial (istinnyi sud) is required before property may be confiscated, and that no one may be punished without [sufficient] cause (bez ispravy). Muscovite codes contain procedural and evidentiary requirements for imposing criminal punishment or confiscating property, and they accorded treatment to the tsar's subjects in litigation. This study will examine these issues primarily in relation to the 1649 Law Code with some attention to the 1669 Statute theft, robbery and murder cases, tracing their roots in earlier codifications of Russian law: medieval codes and charters, the 1497 Code (Sudebnik), the 1550 Code (Sudebnik), and the Rule Book (Ustavnaia kniga) of the Felony Chancellery (Razboinyi prikaz), The focus here will remain on theoretical principles of law, not its practice as recorded in cases preserved in chancellery archives, which may well have differed.1 To understand what equal justice and proper trial meant to Muscovites, we must distinguish between substantive and procedural law. Substantive law refers

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