This chapter explores the complexity of the judicial system by surveying the multiple venues of legal proceedings in Muscovy, then by examining judicial practice and finally by surveying changes in the positive law. The Russian Orthodox Church was a key beneficiary of judicial immunity. Muscovy's colonial policy was laissez-faire in the seventeenth century, tolerating diversity in law, judicial institutions and elites. The legal system embraced by the system of governors was uniform across the state in law and procedure, but not in judicial venue. Muscovite judicial practice was in many ways more medieval than early modern in its distributive justice. The seventeenth century was remarkable for the generation and codification of secular law. Going into the seventeenth century, judges had available to them several codes of law. The most significant changes in positive law were made in the realm of social legislation. Society interacted with law in a multitude of ways in seventeenth-century Muscovy.