Against the historical backdrop of the codification debate in nineteenth century Germany, this article traces the reassertion of ‘legal science’ as an autonomous source of European legal integration in current legal and political discourse about the harmonization of European private law. The article argues that a grasp of widely shared ideas about the role and function of legal science and legal scientists is vital both towards an understanding of the extraordinary impact of the academic project of a European civil code on legal and political discourse in the Union in particular and towards furthering the theory of legal fields in general
