Introduction
in effect the rigid nationalism of the Historical School and the patriotic clamors of the Germanists. The Romanists would have imposed upon the country the Byzantine law, while the Germanists would have destroyed it root and branch. Jhering’s attitude in this controversy is shown by the fact that jointly with Gerber, a Germanist, he founded (1856) a journal for the study of the dogmatic of modern Roman and German private law. This conflict between the law of a foreign and extinct empire and the living domestic customs was a heritage of centuries; and while the perpetual struggle had somewhat abated, credit is due to Jhering for throwing the weight of his influence in the direction of the only practical and possible solution of Germany’s effort to attain a unified system of law.
2. He is the founder of modern legal realism, and the progenitor on the juristic side, as Comte is the ancestor on the philosophical side, of the Sociological School of Jurisprudence.
Jhering was a bitter (if not always consistent) enemy of the subjective; this appears
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