Puder on Thibaut and Von Savigny's Codification Debate

Markus G. Puder, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, has posted Dystopian or Not: Alternate Realities for Thibaut and Von Savigny's Codification Debate:

Friedrich Carl von Savigny (wiki)

In 1814, after Napoleon’s military defeat and with major European political re-alignments afoot, two German law professors of Huguenot lineage—Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut and Friedrich Carl von Savigny—debated the question of whether Germany was ripe for a national code that could replace the motley patchwork of legislated and customary laws swirling amidst the German law and language space.

Savigny—with his position that neither the German legal profession nor the German language was ready for such a leap—initially prevailed, at least inasmuch as the remainder of the nineteenth century is concerned. Still, the private law codification so vigorously fought by Savigny ultimately emerged with the German Civil Code of 1900.

In addition to delving deeply into the legal, political, and cultural contents of the Thibaut-Savigny debate, this Article enquires about the consequences of alternate outcome realities—whether dystopian or not. These alternatives include a much earlier codification as well as the possibility of no codification at all. Both scenarios are vetted against the themes of law and language, code and unity, and codification and democracy.

Both Protestants.

--Dan Ernst