ИСТОРИЈСКА ШКОЛА ПРАВА
HISTORICAL SCHOOL OF LAW

Summary/Abstract: The idea of historicism in explaining society, state and law was dominant in spiritual activities in many periods. After, at the beginning of XIX century, the attimde was changed toward the conception of the history of positive law, it was possible to establish a new - historical school of law. It originated in Germany after the French bourgeois revolution when the ussue arose as to whether it was necessary to codify legal rules in that country. As an answer to Tibault's support for codification, Savigny has published his Vom Beruf wiser Zeit For Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft - a book which had a decisive influence in postponing the adoption of the Code. The ideas and arguments in this book are the mainstream of the historical school of law. The spirit of people (Volksgeist) as a common and general conviction gives rise to and determines the law of the people, just as its language. The law which originates in the spirit of people is developing rather slowly and in an evolutionary way and, while not changing the substance given by that spirit, undergoes through three stages of its development, namely: unconscious and undeveloped customary law, scientific law, and legislation. On the ground of such premises, one may conclude that the codification of German private law would be in vain, since German law of the period was still in the stage of customs. These ideas were accepted also on the other side of the river Rhone, namely in the francophone countries, where they become, at least for some time, a significant counterwight to the conceptions of the dominant exegetic shool.

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