Jurist, born in Aurich, NW Germany. He was a teacher of Roman Law at Giessen (185268), and at Göttingen from 1872. He founded a school of jurisprudence based on teleological principles, and wrote extensively on Roman law and legal history. He is sometimes regarded as the founder of sociological jurisprudence.
Rudolf von Jhering (also Ihering) (22 August 1818 - 17 September 1892) was a German jurist. He is known for his 1872 book Der Kampf ums Recht, as a legal scholar, and as the founder of a modern sociological and historical school of law.
He was born in Aurich, and died in Göttingen.
He entered the university of Heidelberg in 1836 and, after the fashion of German students, visited successively Göttingen and Berlin.
After graduating doctor juris, Jhering established himself in 1844 at Berlin as privatdocent for Roman law, and delivered public lectures on the Geist des romischen Rechts, the theme which may be said to have constituted his life's work.
The German juristic world was still under the dominating influence of the Savigny cult, and the older school looked askance at the daring of the young professor, who essayed to adapt the old to new exigencies and to build up a system of natural jurisprudence. This is the keynote of his famous work, Geist des romischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stüfen seiner Entwickelung (1852-1865), which for originality of conception and lucidity of scientific reasoning placed its author in the forefront of modern Roman jurists.
It is no exaggeration to say that in the second half of the 19th century the reputation of Jhering was as high as that of Savigny in the first.
In 1868 Jhering accepted the chair of Roman Law at Vienna, where his lecture-room was crowded, not only with regular students but with men of all professions and even of the highest ranks in the official world.
But to a mind constituted like his, the social functions of the Austrian metropolis became wearisome, and he gladly exchanged its brilliant circles for the repose of Göttingen, where he became professor in 1872. In this year he had read at Vienna before an admiring audience a lecture, published under the title of Der Kampf ums Recht (1872; This was followed a few years later by Der Zweck im Recht (2 vols., 1877-1883).
In Göttingen he continued to work until his death.
Among others of his works were the following: Beitrage zur Lehre von Besitz, first published in the Jahrbucher für die Dogmatik des heutigen romischen und deutschen Privatrechis, and then separately; Der Besitzwille, and an article entitled Besitz in the Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (1891), which aroused at the time much controversy, particularly on account of the opposition manifested to Savigny's conception of the subject.
See also Scherz und Ernst in der Jurisprudenz (1885);
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