The legalists were liberal reformist jurists, legal scholars, and progressive bureaucrats in the Russian Empire. This historiographical research identifies their political role, drawing on extensive historical, philosophical, and legal literature. The movement emerged under the influence of the Great Reforms, primarily the Judicial Reform. It united legal professionals who supported the idea of a constitutional monarchy and liberal ideology. They advocated the theory of human rights, the rule of law, the legal order, and constitutionalism. While liberal theorists receive substantial scholarly attention, the legal dimension of their work is often overlooked. Contemporaries were aware of these "people of the legal order", as they called themselves, but the liberal legalists were largely forgotten after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Modern historians have been slow to recognize the legalist movement in Russia. First, they established the role of lawyers in the imperial liberation movement, and subsequently identified elements of their ideology and organization. In the early 21st century, the scholarly community finally came close to uncovering the legalist movement as a socio-political phenomenon that exerted a significant ideological influence on liberalism in Russia. This research utilizes a wide range of historical sources and contemporary studies to compare different perspectives on the essence and development of the legalist movement in the Russian Empire.