Puchta, Georg Friedrich

Introduction

Georg Friedrich Puchta was one of the most prominent exponents of legal doctrine and legal theory in Pandect law and was, along with Friedrich Carl von Savigny, one of the leading proponents of the German Historical School of Jurisprudence in the first half of the nineteenth century.

However, from the late nineteenth century onwards, Puchta was also considered a representative of a failed juristic methodology and so-called “jurisprudence of concepts” (“Begriffsjurisprudenz”), viewed by its critics as completely out of touch with everyday reality. It was not until the end of the twentieth century that the condemnation of the nineteenth century jurisprudence of concepts, which for more than a century had been overly broad and often lacking in objectivity, became the subject of a criticism that took an historical view of legal theory. This paved the way for a more differentiated evaluation of Puchta’s work and recognition of his enduring achievements for present-day...