Abstract: The object of the research is social relations arising in the process of implementing the institution of the judge dissenting opinion before The Judiciary Reform of 1864 and until the end of the XIXth century. The subject of the research is the legal regulation of the institution of the judge dissenting opinion in Russia since XVIIIth till XIXth centuries. The author of the article examines how that legal phenomenon evolved during the aforesaid period and analyzes the practice of the Senate in appealing to dissenting opinions to court proceedings, archives, and all cases when court decisions were not ordinary. The methodological basis of the research involved such research methods as systems analysis, historical and legal analysis, dialectical, formal (logical) methods, complex approach, etc. The main contribution of the author to the studies of the institution of the judge dissenting opinion in civil legal proceedings is her attempt to study how the institution evolved from the point of view of causal and competitive models of civil legal proceedings. The author comes to the conclusion that the main features of this phenomenon, although naturally integrated into basic principles of the causal model, were set forth by The Senate in the course of the development of the institution of the judge dissenting opinion.