From Jhering to Radbruch: On the Logic of Traditional Legal Concepts to the Social Theories of Law to the Renewal of Legal Idealism

At the outset of the second half of the 19th century, the German science of Pandects was in its prime. Its leading proponent was Georg Friedrich Puchta (1798–1846), who also led the Historical School of law together with Savigny, whose successor in Berlin he became in 1842. His theory of an autonomous “scientific law” opened new possibilities of developing law through dogmatic and conceptual constructions (Begriffsjurisprudenz or “jurisprudence of concepts”) by the judiciary and by jurisprudence.