These sources of law have an inner connection and interact organically,214 and do so in a manner effectively precluding the construction of an absolute normative hierarchy of sources.The exact hierarchy and relationships between the different sources of law appear to be decided by historical factors, such as the power of the state to enforce legislation in contrast with opposing forces wishing to reduce the influence of legislation, and the need of supplementary law (case law and jurisprudence), and so on.215 Methodologically, Savigny takes positive law as being the selfevident point of departure for any analysis of law. His famous doctrine of statute interpretation serves as an example.According to this doctrine, the proper interpretation of statutes is founded upon four basic elements: the grammatical, the logical, the historical, and the systematic.216 Taken together, these elements make the understanding of the statute complete,217 and make the historic-systematic method of the Historical School feasible.218 According to Savigny, the entire body of legal sources makes the purpose of the analysis of law self-evident: “Einheit und Vollständigkeit.”219This purpose can only be fulfilled if the jurist understands the law and its different sources as a totality of norms. A totality whose members are not to be investigated separately and inorganically, because it is through such incomplete investigations that the purpose of legal analysis is frustrated, which results in an inadequate and inferior, disunited and incomplete, understanding of law.220 For it is the lack of either, or both, unity and completeness that the understanding and application of law becomes problematic, since, on the one hand, lack of unity gives rise to contradictions, while on the other, lack of completeness a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 617 214 Ibid., pp. 50-57. 215 E.g., ibid., pp. 264-265. 216 Ibid., pp. 213-214. 217 Ibid., p. 215. 218 See, e.g., Coing, Privatrecht 2, pp. 41-44;Wieacker, History, pp. 292-299. 219 Savigny, System1, p. 262. 220 Ibid., pp. 262-263.
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