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Savigny, Friedrich Carl von

2023; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-031-19546-4_36

2198-9850

Stephan Meder,

Law and Political Science

When raising the question of what is “law” and where it comes from, one encounters two basic ideas of thought, which have, to this day, remained at odds with each other. According to the first school of thought, an ubiquitous authority standing above society disseminates from the top down a set of norms with the aim of regulating social life. In contrast to this stands the idea that law is independent from any commanding will, and emerges spontaneously from the bottom up and society itself. Both points of view are rooted in differing notions of the emergence of which either sees it as dictated by the authorities or as a “spontaneous order” evolving “on its own”. Friedrich Carl von Savigny, the founder and leading thinker of the German Historical School of Jurisprudence, believed that law was rather created by societal forces than by the order of a state legislator. The famous Pandectist and authority on the School, Bernhard Windscheid (1817-1892), shared this belief and described the epochal change that had been introduced by Savigny to the field of jurisprudence as following: