The Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History cordially invites you to a talk by Boğaç Ergene titled "The Price of Justice: Fee Schemes and Revenue Generation in Ottoman Courts of Law" (co-authored with Zeynep Dörtok Abacı) on May 21 (14.00).

This paper estimates the potential revenues of the Bursa and Kastamonu courts in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries by considering several possible compensation schemes that the courts might have employed. Our findings indicate major variations in the earnings of the two courts as expected, but also in the income generated by a single court in different periods. Furthermore, they suggest that court-usage was anything but affordable for most court clients, including the wealthier ones. Finally, our calculations indicate the need on the part of the court staff to complement their income from the court's operations with alternative, legitimate and illegitimate, sources of revenue.