Practice of mediator's court in urban settlements of the first quarter of the 19th century

Mediation is an integral part of pre-trial conflict resolution. The decrees on mediation available in the Russian legislation of the 18th-19th centuries regulate the main criteria for functioning of this institution and include such elements as court composition, scope of regulation, terms, etc. The report considers three main laws on the practice of the mediator’s court covering almost a century. The first mention of the term refers to 1727 and used to mean an intermediary. Through time, the mediator’s court undergone changes affecting its social, professional and procedural scope of regulation, and by the beginning of the 19th century it had acquired the features of arbitral tribunal. Despite the complication of legal proceedings, the basic feature of mediator’s court was the unchanging agreement of the parties with the candidates for mediators and the decisions they made. The incident that happened in Sergiyev Posad demonstrates the use of mediation in practice in the first quarter of the 19th century, and allows us to conclude that mediation is one of the most important components of municipal government, it is historically determined, depends on changing real conditions, and is adjusted by life circumstances.