Psychological Techniques in the Arsenal of the Pre-Revolutionary Russian Legal Profession

Abstract

The problem of the use of psychological methods of influencing professional judges and juries by professional lawyers, and especially by lawyers, is relevant and often becomes the subject of scientific and public discussion. At the same time, the history of the appeal of domestic legal practitioners to psychological methods of strengthening their position seems to be insufficiently studied. The purpose of the article is to study the psychological techniques used by pre-revolutionary lawyers. It is shown that, in addition to legal argumentation, jurors effectively used appeals to the humanism of jurors, their patriotism, religious feelings, the urge to empathy, playing on the legal nihilism of society, the latter’s opposition to the state mechanism of autocratic Russia.