Jhering, Rudolf von

Rudolf von Jhering (1818–1892) was Professor in Roman and Private Law since 1845 and one of the most important German jurists of the nineteenth century. His very rich literary production lasted 50 years. In such a huge period of activity, Jhering’s legal perspective and method changed. Thus his jurisprudence is usually divided into two periods: The first one is considered as the formalist, constructivist, and systematic phase (from 1842 to 1871) and the second period (from 1872 to 1892) represents the realist, teleological, and proto-sociological phase of his production. The passage to the second stage took a transition period from 1859 to 1871, when Jhering expressed a kind of dissatisfaction for a purely formal study of law, which was mainly based on systematic and formalist thinking and scarcely involved with the “substantial element of the law.