Sudebnik of Tsar Ivan IV (Russian: Судебник) was an expansion and revision of the Sudebnik of 1497, a code of laws instituted by Ivan the Great, his grandfather. It is considered the result of the first Russian parliament of feudal Estates (Zemsky Sobor).
The Sudebnik of 1550 liquidated the aristocracy's judicial privileges and strengthened the role of state judicial bodies.
The Sudebnik also provided for the active participation of the elective representatives of local communities (rural heads, jurymen, tselovalniki, dvorskie etc.) in legal proceedings. The arrest of suspects could be made only at the consent of the local community. The representative of a community (dyak) participated in judicial office-work. Town and rural communities had the right to self-management and the distribution of taxes. The Sudebnik confirmed the right of peasants to leave their feudal lords. The law precisely defined that the peasant had the right to leave the landowner after the payment of two fixed fees (a "break-away" fee called pozhiloye and a transportation fee called povoz).
Rus' Justice was the legal code of Kievan Rus' and the subsequent Rus' principalities during the times of feudal division. It was written at the beginning of the 12th century and remade during many centuries. The basis of the Russkaya Pravda, Pravda of Yaroslav was written at the beginning of the 11th century. Russkaya Pravda was a main source of Old Russian Law.
The judicial reform of Alexander II is generally considered one of the most successful and consistent of all his reforms. A completely new court system and order of legal proceedings were established. The main results were the introduction of a unified judicial system instead of a cumbersome set of estates of the realm courts, and fundamental changes in criminal trials. The latter included the establishment of the principle of equality of the parties involved, the introduction of public hearings, the jury trial, and a professional advocate that had never existed in Russia. However, there were also problems, as certain obsolete institutions were not covered by the reform. Also, the reform was hindered by extrajudicial punishment, introduced on a widespread scale during the reigns of his successors – Alexander III and Nicholas II.