The five articles assembled in the present issue of Cahiers du Monde russe are intended to contribute to the exploration of the legal and judicial history of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Yet their scope is not limited to this particular field of research. They have in common to address key problems in Russian and Soviet history, broadly conceived, through an investigation of the judicial system and the various uses of justice (pravosudie) by the population, as well as through a questioning of the meaning of justice (spravedlivost') in Russian culture. This foreword briefly describes each of these articles, and then proceeds to outline some issues that are of importance in order to evaluate the content and meaning of "practice" both in the study of legal and judicial history and in the study of justice and authority in the Russian context.