Born on 21 February 1779 Savigny was a German jurist and historian.

Savigny was the descendant of a distinguished Huguenot family from Lorraine, in France, which moved to Germany in 1730 to escape Catholic intolerance. The family derived its name from the Castle of Savigny in the valley of the Moselle River; its members retained their German allegiance upon the transfer of Lorraine to France.

According to Savigny’s theory of law, law is a product of people’s spiritual and historical experience. It “is first developed by custom and popular acceptance, next by judicial decisions—everywhere, therefore, by internal silently operating powers, not by the arbitrary will of the law-giver.”

Savigny’s central idea was that law is an expression of will of the people. It doesn’t come fromdeliberate legislation but arises as a gradual development of common consciousness of thenation.

The Volksgeist manifestsitself in the law of the people: it is therefore essential to follow up the evolution of the Volksgeistby legal research.

Theview of Savigny was that codification should be preceded by             “anorganic, progressive, scientific study of the law” by which he meant a historical study of law and reform was to wait for the results of the historians.

Savignyfelt that “a proper code [of law could only] be an organic system based on the true fundamental principles of the law as they had developed over time.”

For Savigny, German law was an expression of the Volksgeist of the German people. Law is only properly understood in the light of past and present history, and reflects the inner convictions of Volk psychology and shared moral values. The Volksgeist, constantly changing and evolving as the German people changed and evolved, drove the slow evolution of law over the course of history.

Savigny believed that the Volk of every land had a similar effect on each nation’s law.

Savigny, like Herder, thought that there was “an organic connection of law with the being and character of the people. . . . Law grows with the growth, and strengthens with the strength of the people, and finally dies away as the nation loses its nationality.”

BY LAWZ BUREAU