ployed to designate any legal theory taking the positive sources of law alone as being the material point of departure for legal argumentation. In Germany, the jurists of the early 19th Century discussed the feasibility of a German Civil code.The debate reached its summit in1814 when Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut (1772-1840)140 and Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779-1861) entered the debate.141 It is through the discussion between Thibaut and Savigny that the ideas of the Historical School of Jurisprudence were first extended to a wider audience.142 For the purpose of this presentation, what is of interest is not so much the codification itself, but rather its methodological implications. Savigny focused his attention on the fact that a codification of law would fail to unify law (which was the main reason for the unification of law in Germany).143 His objection was that if the ideas supporting a codification of law were to be scrutinized then they would reveal themselves as resting upon a faulty presupposition, namely the idea that an unwieldy and incongruous system of law could be transformed into its opposite by a swift stroke of the pen.To Savigny, the problems connected with a body of law mainly characterized by its lack of external and internal unity were too complicated to be solved by a single act of legislation.144 In reality, lawconsisted of more than a compilation of statutes. It was also made up of customary law, case law, and the doctrines of legal science.145 Moreover, even if the legislator, through the implementation of a code, attempted to abolish the remaining sources of law, they would continue to exist parallel to the statute as well a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 599 140 Deutsche und Europäische Juristen, Schröder and Kleinheyer, eds., Thibaut. 141 Ibid., Savigny. 142 Wilhelm, Juristischen Methodenlehre, pp. 19-28; Coing, Privatrecht 2, pp. 16-22;Wieacker, History, pp. 309-314; Thibaut und Savigny, Stern, ed., Einleitung; Peterson,“Debatten om1826 års förslag till en allmän civillag - en svensk kodifikationsstrid,” in Norden, rätten, historia: Festskrift till Lars Björne, pp. 251-255. 143 Wilhelm, Juristischen Methodenlehre, pp. 23-28; Coing, Privatrecht 2, pp. 16-18. 144 Savigny,“Vom Beruf,” pp. 107-109;Wilhelm, Juristischen Methodenlehre, pp. 24-25, see also n 30 p. 25; Coing, Privatrecht 2, p. 18. 145 Savigny, System1, pp. 34-49. Cf.Wilhelm, Juristischen Methodenlehre, pp. 23-28.
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