Men Above the Law (Russian: Самоуправцы, romanized: Samoupravtsy) is a tragedy in five acts by Aleksey Pisemsky first published in the No.2, February 1867 issue of Vsemirny Trud magazine.

[2][3] In November, Pisemsky started the procedures necessary for the play to be produced on stage, giving it the provisional title The Yekayerinisk Eagles (Екатерининские орлы).

"The play is depressing, and leaves one with a heavy heart... burdened with outrages, which the author never even tries to alleviate with an attempt to provide reason or rational understanding of [all these horrors]," he wrote.

In a fit of righteous rage he imprisons her in a sepulcher, throws her lover, the Army officer Rykov into a basement and apportions some more 'vengeful' deeds along the way, which also includes injuring his brother Sergey in a duel (for having made passes for the young Princess, too).

In a bizarre 'happy-ending' the dying Prince Platon pardons everybody, blesses his (soon to be) widow to marry her lover (whom he now greatly admires for having fought the Devochkin's louts heroically); everybody's in tears of compunction, gratitude and joy.