Savigny, Friedrich Karl von (1779–1861)

Friedrich Karl von Savigny was a powerfully influential student of Roman law both in its medieval manifestations and in the contemporary ‘Pandektenrecht’ (law based on Justinian’s Pandects, or Digest) of nineteenth-century Germany. His contributions to the philosophy of law are in the spirit of the Romantic movement, and lay stress on the organic character of the legal experience of a people, hence favouring customary law over statute law, and opposing the contemporary movement towards codification. A founder of what is sometimes called the ‘historical school’ in the philosophy of law, he argues that law is to be understood always in its historical setting, the result of a process of historical development, not simply as the arbitrary command of a – perhaps transitory – sovereign power.