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The “jurisprudence of concepts” is the English translation of the German term Begriffsjurisprudenz, coined by the German legal scholar Rudolf von Jhering. Jhering used the term polemically to describe a mathematical and conceptual school of jurisprudence far removed from everyday life [1]. It is used today to characterize segments of German jurisprudence of the 19th century. Even today, there is no generally accepted definition of the jurisprudence of concepts [6]. The conventional image of it includes the idea of positive law as a comprehensive code that may be…

1. Conceptual developmentPossession (Latin possessio) is (f)actual control of a thing, as distinct from legal ownership (Latin dominium; Property). Roman law, the basis for theories of possession on the European continent, established as distinct from ownership the categories of possession in civil law ( possessio civilis), which presupposed a legal entry into possession ( iusta causa), and natural possession ( possessio naturalis), which as simple material control ( detentio) required no  iusta  causa. Under the influence of canon law and legisprudence, a highly c…

Rhenish Law in a broad sense is the early modern law that pertained in the territories along the banks of the Rhine (Particular law). In a stricter sense, it means the French law that pertained in the territories along the left bank of the Rhine between Konstanz and Kleve in the 19th century.Following the Treaty of Lunéville (1801), France began imposing conformity with the French legal system in the conquered Rhenish territories. This put an end to the legal fragmentation into many local systems that had been characteristic of the ancien régime in these territories. As this was be…

1. Definition Pandectics or  pandectistics is a collective term for the 19th-century German study of Roman civil law based almost exclusively on the ancient Roman legal sources – the pandects or digests ( Corpus iuris civilis; see Ius commune) of Justinian (Roman law, studies of). The German Historical School prior to 1848, which is often included, had other philosophical and religious premises and a different methodological program.The differences are clearly expressed in R. von Jhering’s 1856 manifesto, in which he dismissed the central demand of the Hi…

1. Definition The German Historical School – which owes its name to Friedrich Carl von Savigny’s call for the establishment of a “historical school” of law in 1814/1815 [5]; [4] – exercised a formative intellectual influence on 19th-century German jurisprudence; despite its specific goals in legal historiography, it is frequently also considered a representative of historicism. Opposing philosophical systems based on natural law, the “arbitrariness” of a legislature, but also “common sense,” Savigny called for the estab…