Historical School — Savigny's Volksgeist — KSLU Jurisprudence Notes

Historical School — Savigny’s Volksgeist

Savigny answered the codifiers: law is found, not made — it grows organically from the Volksgeist [the spirit of the people], like language, and legislation can only declare what popular consciousness has already formed. Custom therefore precedes and outranks legislation. Sir Henry Maine gave the school its evolutionary map — societies move “from status to contract” — while criticising Savigny’s mysticism. The school’s weakness: it cannot explain deliberate, transformative legislation (the abolition of sati, the Hindu Code) that led popular consciousness rather than followed it.