Efremova Nadezhda - Senior Researcher, Institute of State and Law, Russian Academy of Sciences; Professor, Department of Theory and Law and Comparative law, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Candidate of Juridical Sciences. Address: 20 Myasnitskaya Str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation. E-mail: nadnike@mail.ru

The article is devoted to 150 th  anniversary since the publication of Court Rules to be celebrated November 20th, 2014. The laws incorporated in the document had become the pillar for the “Great” judicial reform having lasted for 35 years and aimed to establish court which would be  equal, merciful and just  created a new liberal democratic model of justice absorbing the best practice of Western judicial institutions and own cut and try principles and institutions. Overall, the tasks set by the Fathers of the reform as to modernizing judicial system and judicial process were performed. Justice was the ideological category which determined institutional and functional basis of a new justice. The latter promoted to the development of professional legal attitude of lawyers and hence attitude of lay-men to law. In turn, it contributed to legal culture in Russian society contradicting the immanent legal nihilism typical of it and based mostly on nonconfidence and contempt to court and judges of the pre-reform period.