The proposed project focuses on the evolution of published compilations of Ottoman laws that eventually became the well-known series Düstur. (There are three editions that were published [1851, 1863 and 1866] before what we commonly know as “Düstur, 1. Tertib” was published in 1872.) The Tanzimat era witnessed the growth of a “public sphere” of state administration within which the imperial publications such as Düstur served as “textually mediated organizations of state”—a phrase that I am borrowing from Giddens. I believe focusing on these publications we can see how the Ottoman government used the legal framework to identify the roles and the expanse of government. To be more precise, I seek to explore whether we can read the Düstur compilations to see how Ottoman government defined its own responsibilities and limitations. This attempt is inspired by Foucault’s focus on political economy as a platform within which the efficiency of the state or rather the extent to which one should govern is assessed and negotiated, in this case, among participants to Ottoman governmentality. This is a particular evolution that happened with the development of “liberalism,” which, as an ideology, argues for the least amount of governing possible to run a state. Law gains a particular function with this transformation concerning itself mostly with “how to set juridical limits to the exercise of power by a public authority.” My presentation will connect economic liberalism in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire with the administrative codes selected from the early Düstur compendia. I aim to trace the evolution of laws pertaining to specific administrative practices in this light, and I think Düstur is a good place to do this.