Abstract
The article aims to analyze the evolution of the legal status, appointment procedures, and social profile of the judicial corps of the Zhytomyr District Court in the pre-reform period in the context of imperial legislation and practices of administrative control over judicial power. The methodological framework of the study is based on the principles of historicism and scholarly objectivity, as well as on historical-legal and critical analysis of normative legal acts and clerical materials of judicial and administrative institutions. The research employs systemic, comparative-legal, and prosopographical approaches, which made it possible to reconstruct the career trajectories of judicial officials and to create a generalized sociological portrait of district court assessors. The scientific novelty of the study lies in a comprehensive historical-legal analysis of the legal status, mechanisms of formation, and social characteristics of the judicial corps of the Zhytomyr District Court in the pre-reform period, based on normative legal acts and service records, which allows for a new interpretation of the district court as an instrument of imperial personnel policy, administrative control, and bureaucratization of judicial power in Right-Bank Ukraine. Conclusions. The study demonstrates that the district court in Right-Bank Ukraine functioned not only as a judicial body but also as an administrative-integrative institution intended to ensure control over local elites and to implement imperial legal standards. Personnel policy in district courts was characterized by a combination of elected representatives of the local elite and officials appointed “from the Crown,” which enabled the authorities to balance the co-optation of loyal groups with administrative centralization. Analysis of service records indicates the predominance of nobles with experience in civil service, a lack of significant property holdings, and an orientation toward a bureaucratic career. In legal terms, this points to the gradual bureaucratization of the judicial system in the pre-reform period and the restriction of the autonomy of elective judicial institutions in favor of imperial administration.