gradually abandoned this status doctrine in favour of the notion that all human beings had legal capacity (competence) and thus by a contract could shoulder responsibilities and acquire rights.143 Immanuel Kant’s idea about every individual’s moral freedom and private autonomy is considered to be one important factor in the background for this ideological switch.144 Nevertheless, Friedrich Carl von Savigny is often given the role as the founding father of a private law that could liberate the individual citizen from all corporate ties of the estate and guild society, as well as offer him the option to use his own work or capital to shape his own life.145 (iv) Systematization of law: Savigny’s distinction of natural (unchangeable) rules and political (changeable) rules also influenced his design for a new system for private law. In doing this he made use of two concepts. By the “external” system he meant the plan for systematic presentations, while the “internal” system constituted a great and “organic”unity.The internal system was founded upon legal institutions, which in turn consisted of legal rules. The task of legal science was to explore and explain this system, not to create it, and Savigny readily connected the legal institutions to actual circumstances, to what existed in real life. Thus the legal rules were dependent on historical developments and, in the end, on established customs, an order which the legislator should not change unnecessarily. These ideas paved the way for his making the distinction between public law and private law.This distinction was well known but not generally accepted and Savigny elaborated it into an essential dichotomy, which embraced the whole legal order. This brings us closer to another distinctive feature of European liberal societies during the 19th century, namely the emergence of the somewhat strained distinction between the private sphere of economic life - “civil society” according to Adam Smith c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 75 143 Peterson, C, 1982, pp. 147-151; Sandström1989; Peterson, C2003. 144 Anners 1980, p. 117. 145 Peterson, C, 1982, pp. 148-149; Dilcher, 1975, pp. 503-504.
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