The Pioneer of the Basic Modern Trends in Jurisprudence

First published in 1872, Der Kampf um’s Recht discusses what the law is, how it changes and how it is used as a way of achieving social change. It attracted wide attention, was reissued in several revised editions and translated into a dozen foreign languages. Our reprint presents the standard English edition. The pioneer of the basic modern trends in jurisprudence was a German, Rudolf von Jhering. He might appropriately be called the Mark Twain of German jurisprudence. Gifted with a rare sardonic humor, he led the revolt against philosophical abstraction and conceptualism in German jurispridence and the glorification of logic as a juristic method, which enabled the jurists to disguise the law as a system of legal mathematics. -William Seagle, Rudolf von Jhering: Or Law as a Means to an End, University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 13 No. 1 (December 1945) 71 lii, 138 pp.