Joseph Hessen - The History of the Russian bar. Gift book bound in leather.

For its first major anniversary, which was celebrated in 1914, the Russian bar community prepared a special publication that covered the achievements of the domestic bar over the past 50 years. The adoption of Judicial Statutes in 1864 was the crowning achievement of the era of the "Great Reforms" of Emperor Alexander II. "To establish in Russia a speedy, just, merciful and equal court for all subjects, to elevate the judiciary, to give it proper independence and, in general, to establish among the people that respect for the law, without which public welfare is impossible, and which should be the constant guide of everyone's actions from the highest to the lowest," wrote Emperor Alexander II in a decree to the Ruling Senate, which launched judicial reform in the Russian Empire.

These transformations changed not only the legal proceedings of the Russian Empire, but also the whole way of life of a huge state, and for the Russian bar it actually became its birthday. The titanic work on the creation of a monumental work to perpetuate the achievements of the Russian bar was headed by the famous lawyer and politician, deputy of the II State Duma Joseph Vladimirovich Gessen; the work on the second and third volumes was coordinated by the famous lawyer and criminologist Mikhail Nikolaevich Gernet. The first volume of the History of the Russian Bar was published in 1914, and the second and third in 1916. As a result of many years of collective efforts, a "monument to the moral unity of the Russian legal profession and a testament of the passing generations to the future for hard but glorious work in the name of the triumph of law and justice" appeared. The first, pre-revolutionary edition has long been a bibliographic rarity. Here is an illustrated modern edition of this unique work.