Page:Struggle for Law (1915).djvu/8

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

Introduction


of great fortune or misfortune. Such was the imagery adopted by an accomplished novelist to explain his fatalistic views; and if there be merit in this sprightly figure, we will have no difficulty in conceiving an interesting conjunction of favoring lines to explain the brilliant career of Rudolph von Jhering.

One does not read far into jurisprudence without encountering both his name and his influence. He was a builder of new roads, a maker of new tools, and a creator of ideas. He came upon the world’s stage as the last great influence out of centuries of struggle beginning with the revival of the study of Roman law at Bologna, and the successive stages of Glossators and Commentators, “Mos Italicus” and “Mos Gallicus,” the Practical School and Natural Law, and finally the Historical School, to compose the differences between Romanists and Germanists, and to prepare the way for the Civil Code.[1]

  1. For a full account of the development of German law, see “A General Survey of (etc.) Continental Legal History” (“Continental Legal History Series,” Vol. i), Boston, 1912, p. 311 seq.

viii