The Russian Empire and its legal institutions have often been associated with arbitrariness, corruption, and the lack of a 'rule of law'. Stefan B. Kirmse challenges these assumptions in this important new study of empire-building, minority rights, and legal practice in late Tsarist Russia, revealing how legal reform transformed ordinary people's interaction with state institutions from the 1860s to the 1890s. By focusing on two regions that stood out for their ethnic and religious diversity, the book follows the spread of the new legal institutions into the open steppe of Southern Russia, especially Crimea, and into the fields and forests of the Middle Volga region around the ancient Tatar capital of Kazan. It explores the degree to which the courts served as instruments of integration: the integration of former borderlands with the imperial centre and the integration of the empire's internal 'others' with the rest of society.

Jonathan Daly, The Slavonic and East European Review 98 (4), October 2020, 777-779. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.98.4.0777

Charles Steinwedel, Central Asian Survey, 8 March 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2021.1883241

Alison K. Smith, The Russian Review 80 (2), April 2021, 328-329. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/russ.12315

Aaron B. Retish, The English Historical Review, 17 June 2021, https://academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ehr/ceab144/6301420

Alexander Semyonov, Slavic Review 80 (2), Summer 2021, 425-426, https://doi.org/10.1017/slr.2021.123

Michel Tissier,  H-Soz-Kult, 8. April 2022, www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-29585

Daniel Beer, "Liberalism and the Law in Late Imperial Russia" in: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 24 (2), 2023, 412-424 (review essay also capturing two other books).

Elisei L. Kamenetskii, "Prospects for Comparative Studies of Legal Change in Late Tsarist Russia: Judicial Reform of 1864 in the Crimea and the Volga Region/Review of The Lawful Empire" in: Historia Provinciae – Journal of Regional History 7 (3), 2023, 1044–1158 (simultaneously published in Russian and English).

Robert Geraci, Journal of Modern History  95 (1), 2023, 266–267.

Paperback edition June 2022