District courts are divided into three colleges handling civil, criminal and administrative matters respectively. In the second instance appeals are tried by three professional judges.
3. The Supreme Court deliberating the applications for the cassation, revision and oversight proceedings subjected to it. The Supreme Court consists of the general meeting, civil, criminal and administrative colleges and a college for the constitutional For examining a matter in the Supreme Court the leave for appeal is required from the Permissory Board established in the Supreme Court.
The dominant religion in Estonia is Evangelical Lutheranism. Estonians were Christianized by the Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century. During the Reformation, Lutheranism spread, and the church was officially established in Estonia in 1686. Still, Estonians generally tend not to be very religious, because religion through the nineteenth century was associated with German feudal rule. "In 1992 there were 153 Lutheran congregations in Estonia with an estimated 200,000 members. Active members totaled about 70,000. Orthodox Christianity is the second largest faith, with eighty congregations and about 15,000 members in 1992. Forty-three Orthodox congregations are Estonian, twenty-five are Russian, and twelve are mixed. There are eleven congregations of Old Believers and a convent in northeastern Estonia. .
After independence, ethnic divisions among Orthodox Christians resurfaced over the question of their allegiance to Moscow. Many Estonian Orthodox Church leaders favored greater autonomy from Moscow or total allegiance to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the situation that existed during Estonia's first period of independence. In 1992 the Estonian Orthodox Church, despite local Russian objections, requested autonomy from Moscow. The issue was a delicate one for Russian Orthodox patriarch Aleksiy II, who had been born in Estonia and had served there as a metropolitan.