1. Studies of medico-legal debates in the West include: Clark, Michael and Crawford, Catherine, eds., Legal Medicine in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);CrossRefGoogle ScholarForbes, Thomas, Surgeons at the Bailey: English Forensic Medicine to 1878 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985);Google ScholarGoldstein, Jan, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987);Google ScholarHarris, Ruth, Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law and Society in the Fin de Siécle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989);Google ScholarMohr, James C., Doctors and the Law: Medical Jurisprudence in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993);Google ScholarNye, Robert, Crime, Madness and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National Decline (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984);CrossRefGoogle ScholarRosenberg, Charles E., The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988);Google ScholarSmith, Roger, Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian Trials (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981);Google Scholar and Tighe, Janet, “A Question of Responsibility: The Development of American Forensic Psychiatry, 1838-1930” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1983).Google Scholar

2. The 1864 reform statutes in their entirety are known as Sudebnye ustavy 20 noiabria 1864 goda and are contained in Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperil, vol. 39, 2d ser., 1864 (St. Petersburg, 1867).

3. As historian of Russian legal culture Joan Neuberger summarizes: “The Judicial Reform of 1864 has been considered the most successful of the Great Reforms. Yet its primary goal was to instill a respect for law in Russian society, and there is wide agreement that after the reform Russia remained deficient in precisely this area. The specific goals of the Judicial Reform were to eradicate the convoluted and corrupt old judicial system and to replace it with a modern, independent judiciary, modeled on Western institutions and based on the principle of equality before the law. In social and cultural terms, reformers hoped that exposure to the rule of law, institutionalized in the new courts, would create a legally literate population that could be assimilated into a unified, orderly, civil society.” Neuberger, Joan, “Popular Legal Cultures: The St. Petersburg Mirovoi Sud,” in Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881, ed. Eklof, Ben, Bushnell, John, and Zakharova, Larissa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 231.Google Scholar On the judicial reforms, see Wortman, Richard, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Solomon, Peter H. Jr, ed., Reforming Justice in Russia, 1864-1996: Power, Culture, and the Limits of Legal Order (Armonk, NY, and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1998);Google Scholar Alexandr K. Afanas'ev, “Jurors and Jury Trials in Imperial Russia, 1866-1885,” in Russia's Great Reforms, 214–30; Kucherov, Samuel, Courts, Lawyers and Trials under the Last Three Tsars (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1953);Google Scholar and I. V. Gessen, Sudebnaia Reforma (St. Petersburg, 1905).

4. On the continuity of legal traditions, see Bhat, Girish N., “Trial by Jury in the Reign of Alexander II: A Study in the Legal Culture of Late Imperial Russia, 1864-1881” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1995).Google Scholar For the various social, political, and institutional dimensions of the Great Reforms, see Eklof, Bushnell, and Zakharova, eds., Russia's Great Reforms.

5. See Solomon, ed., Reforming Justice, esp. 21-130; Czap, Peter, “Peasant Class Courts and Peasant Customary Justice in Russia, 1861-1912,” Journal of Social History 1, no. 2 (Winter 1967): 149–78;CrossRefGoogle ScholarFrank, Stephen, “Popular Justice, Community and Culture among the Russian Peasantry, 1870-1900,” The Russian Review 46 (1987): 239–65;CrossRefGoogle ScholarFrierson, Cathy A., “Rural Justice in Public Opinion: The Volost’ Court Debate, 1861-1912,” Slavonic and East European Review 64 (1986): 526–45;Google Scholar Neuberger, “Popular Legal Cultures,” 231-46.

6. See Solomon, ed., Reforming Justice; Levin-Stankevich, Brian L., “The Transfer of Legal Technology and Culture: Law Professionals in Tsarist Russia,” in Russia's Missing Middle Class: The Professions in Russian History, ed. Balzer, Harley D. (Armonk, NY, and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 223–49Google Scholar. On reform of adjudicative processes, see Bhat, “Trial by Jury”; on the introduction of the jury system, see Atwell, John, “The Jury System and its Role in Russia's Legal, Social, and Political Development from 1857-1914” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1970);Google Scholar for the reform of appellate functions, see Levin-Stankevich, Brian L., “Cassation, Judicial Interpretation and the Development of Civil and Criminal Law in Russia, 1864-1917: The Institutional Consequences of the 1864 Court Reform in Russia” (Ph.D. diss., University of New York at Buffalo, 1984).Google Scholar

7. See, for example, Hachten, Elizabeth A., “Science in the Service of Society: Bacteriology, Medicine, and Hygiene in Russia, 1855-1907” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1991);Google Scholar and Todes, Daniel, “From Radicalism to Scientific Convention: Biological Psychology in Russia from Sechenov to Pavlov” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981).Google Scholar

8. While the circuit (okruzhnoi) court was the most prominent postreform forum in which physicians conducted their forensic obligations, medical practitioners also performed forensic duties at other administrative levels. Forensic medicine, including questions of mental competency, was legislatively defined and institutionally organized according to a three-tiered system composed of district and city doctors; the medical section of provincial administrations; and the Medical Council, which operated under the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

9. According to the prereform laws of proof, the probative value of expert testimony was thus stated; “The testimony of medical officials is accepted as absolute proof, when it, having been conducted on a legal basis, contains clear and positive attestation about the subject and does not contradict the reliable circumstances of the case.” See Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperil, vol. 15, bk. 2, O sudoproizvodstve po prestupleniiam (St. Petersburg, 1832), article 1042. With the promulgation of the judicial decrees of November 20, 1864, these rules lost their significance. With regard to the statutes outlining the new approach to judgment “according to inner conviction” in criminal cases, see Sudebnye ustavy 20 noiabria 1864 goda, vol. 2, Ustav ugolovnogo sudoproizvodstva [Statues of Criminal Procedure] (St. Petersburg, 1867), articles 119, 766, 803, and 804. With regard to civil cases, however, the new statutes did not require the court to obey those expert opinions that were “not in agreement with the reliable circumstances of the case.” Sudebnye ustavy 20 noiabria 1864 goda, vol. 1, Ustav grazhdanskogo sudoproizvodstva [Statutes of Civil Procedure] (St. Petersburg, 1867), article 533.

10. Forensic medical questions were discussed at twelve congresses from 1885-1913, during which more than twenty papers were devoted to this topic. Presenting these works were various types of physicians involved in forensic-medical activity: university professors, inspectors of the medical section of provincial administrations, and district and city doctors. The geographical representation was equally diverse, though primarily drawn from university cities such as Moscow, Kazan, Kiev, and St. Petersburg. For a description of the scientific and organizational topics discussed, see A. M. Gamburg, Razvitie sudebnomeditsinskoi nauki i ekspertizy, po materialam s''ezdov i soveshchanii (Kiev: Gosudarstvennoe Meditsinskoe Izdatel'stvo USSR, 1962). On the Pirogov Society's role in the development of the Russian medical profession's service ethos and political activity, see Frieden, Nancy M., Russian Physicians in an Era of Reform and Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

11. See for example, “Voprosy vrachebnoi ekspertizy v obsuzhdenii Moskovskogo Iuridicheskogo Obshchestva (Svodnyi protokol zasedanii Moskovskogo Iuridicheskogo Obshchestva 21 oktiabria, 4 noiabria i 3 dekabria 1891 g.),” luridicheskii vestnik no. 11 (1892): 386-410; and Doklad soedinennoi kommisii s.-peterburgskikh obshchestv psikhiatrov i iuridicheskogo po voprosu ob organizatsii psikhiatricheskogo izucheniia prestupnogo klassa (St. Petersburg, 1894).

12. For a comprehensive and detailed discussion of this topic, see Engelstein, Laura, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siécle Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

13. William G. Wagner, “Civil Law, Individual Rights, and Judicial Activism in Late Imperial Russia,” in Reforming Justice, 21-43.

14. These efforts at revising the content of criminal laws in 1895 produced a new criminal code, which was officially approved in 1903, though never enacted. On the history of earlier attempts to modify Russia's criminal code, see Engelstein, Keys to Happiness, 20-22. With regard to the governmental links of the medical elite, prominent St. Petersburg physicians, all of whom served as experts in court, were chosen to act as advisory members of the Medical Council under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Medical Council was founded in 1803, began work in 1804, and functioned for over a century until the downfall of the tsarist regime. Members were responsible for decisions and questions about the organization of medical and psychiatric practice, reviews and notifications of medical publications, and the rendering of expertise in contested and controversial criminal cases. Leading medical men who frequently testified before the St. Petersburg circuit court and served as Council members included: I. M. Balinskii (Council tenure, 1861-1895); I. P. Merzheevskii (1876-1908); and V. M. Bekhterev (1894-1916). Between 1822 and 1912, the Medical Council oversaw 5,956 cases that demanded forensic-medical analysis and decisions.

15. See Harris, Murders and Madness; Nye, Crime, Madness and Politics; Mohr, Doctors and the Law; Rosenberg, Trial of Assassin Guiteau; and Smith, Trial by Medicine.

16. Daniel T. Orlovsky, “Professionalism in the Ministerial Bureaucracy on the Eve of the February Revolution of 1917,” in Russia's Missing Middle Class, ed. Balzer, 267-92. In this essay, Orlovsky examines the “ministerial bureaucracy,” by which he means the central institutions of domestic administration, which most often (but not always) were named “ministries” along with their provincial hierarchies and the personnel of both central and provincial offices. In particular, he examines the way in which the existence of individuals with professional qualifications and aspirations in high posts in the ministerial bureaucracy, and the increasing numbers of those in lower posts, is symptomatic of the historical process of professionalization in Russia.

17. Peter the Great first defined in law the situations in which medical expertise was obligatory, issuing regulations in 1714 (Military Instructions and Articles), which ordered that physicians be summoned by courts in all cases requiring a specific knowledge of medicine, and in 1716, requiring physicians to conduct autopsies in all cases in which there was suspicion of violent death. Subsequent legislative acts defining the physician's forensic responsibilities were compiled mechanically in 1832 for the publication of the Digest of Laws (Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii). The 1842 Statutes of Forensic Medicine, which remained active until 1917, systematized these laws and regulated more comprehensively forensic-medical practice. The judicial reform of 1864 further elaborated and defined forensic-medical procedure. Sudebnye ustavy, vol. 1, Ust. grazh. sudoproiz, and vol. 2, Ust. ugol. sudoproiz. For a general historical discussion of Russian forensic medical practice with reference to legislation, see Leonov, I. F., “O razvitii sudebnoi meditsiny otechestvennoi i otnoshenii ee k russkomy zakonodatel'stvu,” in Zapiska i rech’, chitannye v torzhestvennom sobranii Imperatorskogo Universiteta Sv. Vladimira (Kiev, 1845), 1–21.Google Scholar For Soviet accounts of the prerevolutionary development of forensic medicine, see Rozhanovskii, V. A., Sudebno-meditsinskaia ekspertiza v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii i v SSSR (Moscow: Narkomzdrav, 1927);Google Scholar and Shershavkin, S. V., Istoriia otechestvennoi sudebno-meditsinskoi sluzhby (Moscow: Meditsina, 1968).Google Scholar

18. Ulozhenie o nakazaniiakh ugolovnykh i ispravitel'nykh (St. Petersburg, 1866), article 874. On the forensic physician's legal obligation to appear when called to an investigation, and penalties for his failure to do so, see Makalinskii, P. V., “K voprosu ob otvetstvennosti sudebnykh vrachei za neiavku k sledstviiu,” Sudebnyi vestnik. Gazeta Ministerstva lustitsii no. 99(1875): 3.Google Scholar

19. The Medical Statute was incorporated in 1857 into the Digest of Laws as part of volume 13: The Statutes on Food Supply, Social Welfare, Medical Practice and the Medical Police. zakonov, Svod, vol. 13, Ustavy: O narodnom prodovolstvii, obshchestvennom prizrenii, i vrachebnye (St. Petersburg, 1857).Google Scholar On the Medical Statute as the object of the medical profession's criticism over state intrusion and, in particular, those articles that defined the physician's ethical code, see Frieden, Russian Physicians, esp. 265-73. For a historical analysis of the cameralist ideas and practices that informed tsarist approaches to state medicine, see Raeff, Marc, The Weil-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).Google Scholar On how Catherine, following the European model, applied the eighteenth-century notion of the custodial state to the medical sphere, see Alexander, John T., “Catherine the Great and Public Health,” Journal of the History of Medicine 36, no. 2 (1981): 185–204.Google Scholar

20. The Medical Statute of 1892 repeated almost word for word the many legal impositions of earlier decrees. Svod zakonov, vol. 13, Vrachebnyi ustav (1892) lists the previous laws on which this edition is based, demonstrating the durability of physicians’ legal obligations. Only in 1905 was the USM significantly changed when in place of the 133 articles, which appeared in the publication of 1892, only 19 remained.

21. Ust. ugol. sudoproiz., article 336.

22. In the USM, forensic medical investigations in criminal cases are divided into three main sections: autopsies; injuries; procedure. The judicial statutes of 1864 retain roughly the same division.

23. Ust. ugol. sudoproiz., articles 350-352 pertain to the examination of women, and articles 353-355 to the accused's mental condition.

24. For a cross-section of Russian physicians’ police-administrative duties: on the conflict over the grounds for forensic-medical autopsy, see Snigirev, V., “O povodakh k sudebnomeditsinskim vskrytiiam mertvykh tel,” Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny i obshchestvennoi gigieny no. 3 (1866): 48–58Google Scholar (hereafter Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny). On physicians’ duties under the state's police-enforced regulation of prostitution, see Bernstein, Laurie, “Yellow Tickets and State-Licensed Brothels: The Tsarist Government and the Regulation of Urban Prostitution,” in Health and Society in Revolutionary Russia, ed. Solomon, Susan Gross and Hutchinson, John F. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 45–65.Google Scholar On the enlistment of physicians for the medical examination of corporal punishment subjects, from the point of view of a forensic physician, see Pokryshkin, P. S., “O sudebno-meditsinskoi ekspertize po otnosheniiu k sudebnym prigovoram,” Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny no. 1 (1871): 23–25.Google Scholar

25. Ust. ugol. sudoproiz., articles 250, 244, and 258.

26. Ibid., article 254.

27. V. Snigirev, “Ustav sudebnoi meditsiny 1857 goda i sudebnye ustavy 1864 goda,” Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny no. 2 (1867): 6.

28. This arrangement did not trouble all physicians. As physician Snigirev stated: “For the physician and for ekspertiza it makes absolutely no difference: whether the autopsy is designated by this or that individual, and whether during it the investigator is present, or the police official. Consequently, this circumstance cannot in any way influence the course of the case or negatively affect the status of the physician-expert.” Snigirev, “Ustav sudebnoi meditsiny,” 5.

29. See above, note 17. E. V. Pelikan (1824-1884), professor of forensic medicine at St. Petersburg's Military Medical Academy and director of the Medical Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, sought to illustrate with comparative, if uneven, figures the newfound significance and widespread application of forensic medicine in criminal cases. His figures attest to the relative frequency of autopsies in comparison to other types of forensic-medical activity. From 1861 to 1866 12,000 autopsies were conducted. In 1865 chemical-microscopic investigations of “suspicious stains” were conducted 315 times, in 1866 417 times, and in 1867 (up to December) 379 times; in 1862 forensic-chemical investigations of poisons were conducted 320 times, 1863 346 times, 1864 416 times, 1865 449 times, 1866 444 times, and 1867 (until the end of December) 550 times. With regard to forensic-psychiatric questions, in Pelikan's words, “Suffice it to say that in Russian courts the question of the accused's mental illness was initiated in 800 cases annually.” Pelikan, E. V., “O znachenii estestvennykh nauk dlia iurisprudentsii,” Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny no. 2 (1868): 37–46.Google Scholar

30. USM (1857), articles 1736-1854. See also, “About the grounds for forensic-medical autopsy.”

31. The USM retained its force upon the enactment of the judicial reforms by virtue of a single cross-reference to it in Ust. ugol. sudoproiz., article 342. For tabulation of forensic-medical cases of “sudden death” in a single province, see Surkov, M. N., “Sudebno-meditsinskie sluchai v Simbirskoi gubernii, v 1860-1864 godakh,” Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny no. 1 (1866): 8–27.Google Scholar The author was a district physician in Simbirsk.

32. For example, before a burial could take place, the police were required to confirm—via inquest—that the death was not the result of violence. Under this administrative formality, forensic physicians continued to participate in cases of sudden death. Snigirev, “Ustav sudebnoi meditsiny 1857,” 7.

33. P. R. “Glasnyi sud i vrachi-eksperty,” Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny no. 4 (1867): 14.

34. Rozhanovskii, Sudebno-meditsinskaia ekspertiza, 33.

35. Koni, A. F., “O zadachakh russkogo sudebno-meditsinskogo zakonodatel'stva,” speech of October 27, 1890, in luridicheskaia letopis’ 1, chron. (January 1891): 74.Google Scholar

36. Snigirev, “Ustav sudebnoi meditsiny,” 2.

37. Common in Eastern countries in the last century, this was a large sack made from animal skin for holding wine.

38. Snigirev, “Ustav sudebnoi meditsiny,” 2.

39. S. Godlevskii, “O sudebnoi ekspertize: K voprosu o znachenii ‘svedushchikh liudei’ v ugolovnom sudoproizvodstve,” Zhurnal iuridicheskogo obshchestva (September 1894): 73-74.

40. The medical expert's investigation could pertain to two of the three questions that made up the question of guilt in Russia: 1) whether a crime was committed; 2) whether this crime was the act of the defendant; and 3) whether the defendant should be imputed with responsibility for the crime (vmeneno v vinu). The forensic physician participated in the investigation of the first and third questions in particular (with the latter being the specific terrain of forensic psychiatry). While all of these questions were decided conclusively at the trial session, they were first subject to preliminary investigation. See Vladimirov, L. E., Uchenie ob ugolovnykh dokazatel'stvakh: Lichnyi sudeiskii osmotr i zakliucheniia ekspertov (Khar'kov, 1886), 62.Google Scholar For an examination of the Russian conception of “legal guilt” and the principles governing guilt determination in Russian jury trials after the 1864 judicial reforms, see Bhat, Girish N., “The Moralization of Guilt in Late Imperial Russian Trial by Jury: The Early Reform Era” Law and History Review 15 (1997): 77–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. Criminal cases were almost always cases in which the state was one of two parties to a suit; private citizens rarely acted as plaintiffs. On Peter I's introduction of the procuracy and its various supervisory functions under different reigns, see Sergei M. Kazantsev, “The Judicial Reform of 1864 and the Procuracy” in Reforming Justice, 44-60. With the abolition of the procuracy's diffuse supervisory function, the judicial reform transformed the role of the procurator, making him both a prosecutor and a liaison between the court (to which he was attached) and the central state administration.

42. On the French system, see Harris, Murders and Madness, esp. 125-54; Esmein, A. Adhemar, A History of Continental Criminal Procedure, with Special Reference to France, trans. Simpson, John (Boston: Little, Brown, 1913), 528–69;Google ScholarMartin, Benjamin F., “The Courts, the Magistrature, and Promotions in Third Republic France, 1871-1914,” American Historical Review 87 (1982): 977–1009;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Garner, James W., “Criminal Procedure in France,” Yale Law Journal 25 (1916): 255–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Russian procedural rules, see Bhat, “Trial by Jury,” esp. 54-58. On Russian defense lawyers, see Levin-Stankevich, “Transfer of Legal Technology,” 228-34; and Wortman, Russian Legal Consciousness.

43. See Esmein, History of Continental Criminal Procedure, 251-71 and 622-23.

44. On the origin and meaning of this expression in Russian criminal law, see Tagantsev, N. S., Russkoe ugolovnoe pravo: Lektsii, 2d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1902).Google Scholar On this basic tenet of Roman-canonical theory in relation to continental and English systems of medical expertise, see Crawford, Catherine, “The Emergence of English Forensic Medicine: Medical Evidence in Common Law Courts, 1730-1830” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1987), 163–68 and 145–202;Google Scholar and Crawford, “Legalizing Medicine: Early Modern Legal Systems and the Growth of Medico-Legal Knowledge,” in Legal Medicine in History, 89-116.

45. The law defined which types of physicians the investigator was to summon for forensic duties according to the physician's state-defined service title (city, district, or police physicians) rather than specialized experience or training. On the examination requirements for these service titles, see Gratsianov, P. A., “K voprosu ob uchastii zemskikh vrachei v sudebno-meditsinskoi ekspertize.” Reprint from Russkii meditsinskii vestnik (St. Petersburg, 1899);Google Scholar and Gvozdev, I. M., “Neskol'ko slov o tak nazyvaemom predvaritel'nom sledstvii i spetsializatsii sudebnoi meditsiny,” in Trudy piatogo s''ezda russkikh vrachei vpamiat’ N. I. Pirogova, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1894), 78–80.Google Scholar On state service-employment categories and corresponding social characteristics within the medical profession, see Frieden, Russian Physicians, 21-52 and 201-21. Critics challenged the state's legal definition of “forensic physician,” and these arguments shaped and were shaped by the process of academic specialization within medicine at this time. While specialization issues infused Russian debates over the forensic-physician's legal role, they are not within the scope of this essay. On the development of the academic bases of forensic medicine in tsarist Russia, see Chervakov, V. F., Matova, E. E., and Shershavkin, S. V., 150 let kafedry sudebnoi meditsiny 1-ogo Moskovskogo ordena Lenina Meditsinskogo Instituta, 1804-1954 (Moscow: Medgiz, 1955);Google Scholar and Evropin, A. K., Istoricheskii ocherk kafedry sudebnoi meditsiny s toksikologieiu pri Imperatorskoi voenno-meditsinskoi akademii (St. Petersburg, 1898).Google Scholar

46. list. ugol. sudoproiz., articles 315-322.

47. Ibid., articles 325-334.

48. Ibid., articles 336-352.

49. Ibid., articles 350-352 and 353-355 respectively. Turn-of-the-century handbooks of forensic-medical legislation—written to aid forensic physicians through the ever changing thicket of legislation and directives—separated out these latter three psychiatric statutes and discussed them as a distinct topic under its own rubric, which often included different types of sexual crimes. Nevertheless, statutorily and procedurally psychiatric expertise remained a subgroup of forensic medicine more generally. See, for example, Ippolitov, S. N., Sbornik zakonopolozhenii o sudebno-meditsinskikh issledovaniiakh. Spravochnaia kniga dlia sudebnykh vrachei (St. Petersburg, 1910).Google Scholar

50. Ust. ugol. sudoproiz., article 330.

51. Ibid., article 325. As I argue in my larger research project, “Medicine, Law, and the State: The Development of Forensic Psychiatry in Late Imperial Russia” (forthcoming), these highly publicized polemics over the appropriate status and significance of forensic medicine contributed in large part to the development of the specialized concept of “expert,” with its modern associations of professional authority, in late imperial Russia. Indeed, by 1905 the Russian term “expert” (eksperi) had come to replace the original legal term “knowledgeable people” (svedushchie liudi) in the forensic-medical statutes.

52. “Sovremennoe znachenie sudebnoi meditsiny v iurisprudentsii,” Zhurnal Ministerstva Iustitsii 23 (1865): 680.Google Scholar

53. Patenko, F. A., “O reorganizatsii sudebno-meditsinskoi ekspertizy.” Reprint from Meditsina: Gazeta dlia prakticheskikh vrachei (St. Petersburg, 1892), 2–3.Google Scholar

54. Sokolov, A., “Sudebno-meditsinskaia ekspertiza: po tsirkuliarnym ukazam pravitel’-stvuiushchego senata,” Zhurnal grazhdanskogo i ugolovnogo prava no. 4 (1890): 132–33.Google Scholar

55. See Polnoe sobranie zakonov, vol. 35 (St. Petersburg, 1860), nos. 35890-92. See also, LeDonne, John P., “Criminal Investigations before the Great Reforms,” Russian History 1, no. 2(1974): 101–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56. See Esmein, History of Continental Criminal Procedure; and Harris, Murders and Madness, 125-38.

57. Harris, Murders and Madness, 125.

58. Ibid.; and Crawford, “The Emergence of English Forensic Medicine.”

59. A. F. Koni, “O zadachakh russkogo sudebno-meditsinskogo zakonodatei'stva,” 73-81.

60. USM, article 1744.

61. Snigirev, “Ustav sudebnoi meditsiny,” 4.

62. This proposal was raised in discussions over the question of medical expertise at the Fifth Pirogov Congress of Russian Physicians, held at the end of 1893 in St. Petersburg. For a critical discussion of these proposals, see Godlevskii, “O sudebnoi ekspertize.”

63. Patenko, “O reorganizatsii sudebno-meditsinskoi ekspertizy,” 2.

64. Bellin, E. F., “Ocherk uslovii deiatel'nosti nashei sudebno-meditsinskoi ekspertizy; prichiny neudovletvoritel'nosti ee i mery k ustraneniiu ikh,” Vestnik obshchestvennoi gigieny, sudebnoi i prakticheskoi meditsiny 2, no. 2 (1889): 10.Google Scholar

65. The court itself consisted of a minimum of three “members” (chleny) while the court was in session, including the presiding judge. The judicial reform statutes also specified that the judicial investigator possessed official “member” status. Sudebnye ustavy, vol. 3, Uchrezhdenie sudebnykh ustanovlenii, articles 77-79, and 140.

66. Contemporaries concurred that L. E. Vladimirov, professor of criminal law at Khar'kov University, sounded the first shot in the polemics over the procedural significance of medical expertise with his monograph, O znachenii vrachei-ekspertov v ugolovnom sudoproizvodstve (Khar'kov, 1870). On the different views expressed in the polemics between 1870 and the 1890s, see: Arsen'ev, K. K., Sudebnoe sledstvie (St. Petersburg, 1871);Google Scholar L. E. Vladimirov, Uchenie ob ugolovnykh dokazateistvakh; Fuks, V. la., “Ugolovno-sudebnaia ekspertiza,” Zhurnal grazhdanskogo i ugolovnogo prava nos. 4–5 (1887): 15–54, 1–39;Google ScholarKoni, A. F., “O polozhenii vracha-eksperta na sude, ego deiatel'nost’ i otnoshenie k sudu,” Zhurnal iuridicheskogo obshchestva pri Imperatorskom S. -Peterburgskom Universitete no. 2, chron. (1894): 148–54;Google ScholarVislotskii, F. V., O dostoinstve sudebno-meditsinskoi ekspertizy v ugolovnom sudoproizvodstve (Warsaw, 1872);Google ScholarNeiding, I.I., “O neobkhodimosti tochnogo raz'iasneniia polozheniia vrachei-ekspertov v razlichnykh fazakh sudebnogo sledstviia,” Trudy vtorogo s'ezda russkikh vrachei v Moskve, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1887), 27–31.Google Scholar For a concise review essay and subtle account of the issues involved, see Fuks, V. la., “K voprosu o znachenii ekspertizy v ugolovnom protsesse,” luridicheskii vestnik no. 9 (1887): 118–36.Google Scholar

67. Although the law did not give cassation decisions binding force in analogous cases, they acquired such force in practice. As historian of Russian law Levin-Stankevich has explained, hundreds of monographs and articles that sought to explain particular questions of law—most directed toward the legal community but some written for the layman as well—made little distinction between statutory law and Court of Cassation decisions. See Levin-Stankevich, “Cassation, Judicial Interpretation and the Development of Civil and Criminal Law in Russia.” One finds the same in writings about forensic medical procedure. It was typical in articles exploring the status and significance of forensic medical expertise for authors to survey the statutory laws and then analyze cassation decisions pertaining to forensic medical procedure. For one of many such examples, see Godlevskii, “O sudebnoi ekspertize,” 77.

68. Resheniia ugolovnogo kassatsionnogo departamenta Pravitel'stvuiushchego Senata za 1875 god (Ekaterinoslav, 1911), no. 199.

69. Respectively, Resh. ugol. kass. depart. Prav. Sen. 1868, no. 944; 1873, no. 713; 1874, no. 47. In addition, the relationship between the investigator and the physician was some-what clarified; for example, the Criminal Cassation Department in 1875 ruled that the investigator did not have the substantive right to impose disciplinary penalties on the forensic physician, since the physician was subject to the procurator, rather than the investigator.

70. As, for instance, the General-German Statute of Criminal Procedure, article 80.

71. Vladimirov, Uchenie ob ugolovnykh dokazatel'stvakh, 18-19.

72. On the tension between these two models of governance (custodial-administrative [Polizeistaat] vs. abstract legal principle [Rechtsstaat]), see Walicki, Andrzej, Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987),Google Scholar introduction.

73. Khreptovich, N. I., “Po povody stat'i ‘o sudebno-meditsinskoi ekspertize v Rossii’ v no. 3 ‘Arkhiva sudebn. medits.’ 1867 g.,” Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny no. 3 (1868): 1.Google Scholar

74. Forensic psychiatrists articulated this position in various forums, including the 1893 Joint Commission of the St. Petersburg Society of Psychiatrists and Juridical Society, which was devoted to “the question of the organization of the psychiatric study of the criminal class.” See Doklad soedinennoi kommisii.

75. Significantly, D. A. Dril’ was a regular participant in the international congresses of criminal anthropology held in European capitals between 1885 and 1906 and one of Russia's more outspoken supporters of the overtly deterministic views of the Italian school of criminal anthropology. The growing European emphasis on the hereditary causation of mental illness and antisocial behavior took its most extreme and controversial form in the works of Italian forensic psychiatrist and founder of “criminal anthropology,” Cesare Lombroso. Particularly influential in the 1880s and 1890s, Lombroso's system maintained that the born criminal (like the epileptic or insane) was an atavism, a throwback to an earlier stage of development. On Dril"s biological perspective, see D. A. Dril’, “Ocherk razvitiia ucheniia novoi pozitivnoi shkoly ugolovnogo prava,” luridicheskii vestnik nos. 10-11 (1883): 171-232, 355-413; and “Antropologicheskaia shkola i ee kritiki,” luridicheskii vestnik no. 12 (1890): 579-99. On the political cast of those who supported this school, see Ostroumov, S. S., Prestupnost’ i ee prichiny v dorevolutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow: Moskovskii Universitet, 1960).Google Scholar

76. “Voprosy vrachebnoi ekspertizy,” 404.

77. Ibid, emphasis in original. Nineteenth-century Russian medical terminology maintains a distinction between insanity one is born with (bezumie) and insanity that develops later in life (sumasshestvie). The legal formulation of nevmeniaemost’ (strictly, the lack of the capacity to be held accountable) first appeared in Russian law in the 1845 criminal code (Ulozhenie o nakazaniiakh). This formulation, with regard to mental competence, extended across articles 103, 104, and 105 in the 1857 edition (renumbered 95,96, and 97 in the 1866 and 1885 editions). A revised formulation appeared as article 39 of the Ugolovnoe Ulozhenie in 1895 (officially approved in 1903, though never enacted). Article 39 stated that an offender was not legally responsible if he was unable to control his actions as a consequence of a pathological condition or mental deficiency. On the original formulation of legal responsibility as stated in Ulozhenie o nakazaniiakh (1857), see Morozov, G. V., Lunts, D. R., and Felinskaia, N. I., Osnovnye etapy razvitiia otechestvennoi sudebnoi psikhiatrii (Moscow: Meditsina, 1976).Google Scholar

78. “Voprosy vrachebnoi ekspertizy,” 404.

79. Ibid., 409-10.

80. Barantsevich, E. M., Sudebno-vmchebnaia ekspertiza v Rossii. Sudebno-vrachebnyi i bytovoi ocherk (zakon i praktika) (Moscow, 1898).Google Scholar

81. See Forbes, Surgeons at the Bailey; Mohr, Doctors and the Law, and Smith, Trial by Medicine.

82. See Goldstein, Console and Classify; Harris, Murders and Madness; and Nye, Crime, Madness and Politics.

83. On the growing influence of and debates over biological theories of deviance in late nineteenth-century Europe, see Nye, Crime, Madness and Politics; Harris, Murders and Madness; Pick, Daniel, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, 1848-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dowbiggin, Ian R., Inheriting Madness: Professionalization and Psychiatric Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).Google Scholar