HISTORICAL SCHOOL OF JURISPRUDENCE

Savigny and Maine, were Roman law scholars who drew on their historical knowledge to make
their points. Their theories of law assert that law is a product of the history of a society

Frederick von Savigny’s Of the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence, 65
published in 1814 to challenge the enactment of a Civil Code for Germany, by all accounts is the
founding document of historical jurisprudence.

The source, or “seat” of the law, he held, is the “common conviction of the people.”69 Law is
“first developed by custom and popular faith” of the people,70 then jurists work these social
influences into the legal doctrine.

Savigny’s account antedates Darwin’s famous work by a half century; he emphasized that law
evolves (develops) with the progress of civilization, but he did not proffer an evolutionary theory

The ideas of Henry Maine, the English giant of historical jurisprudence

After the mid-nineteenth century, when evolutionary ideas were in full bloom,84 Henry Maine
presented a distinctively evolutionary theory of law, portraying legal development as a core
element of social development.85 He criticized both natural law and legal positivism for being
too abstract and for lacking any historical basis in their speculations about law