THE HISTORY OF COMPARATIVE LAW * ^COMPARATIVE law, as ...

1070 HARVARD LAW REVIEW
Studies which had been so strong in the 30's and early 40's died
(Jjat almost completely.'" It had been confined to a small group
(fjf jurists, tjroad-minded and broadly cultured, but not sufficiently
strong to withstand the increasing power of the positivists
who regarded the organizing, analyzing, and exposing of their
existing national law as the sole object of legal science, and who
were inclined to believe that the principles of their law could
claim universal validity. By the middle of the century this spirit
of positivism had become dominant in legal science in all the
western countries. Legal philosophy was at its lowest ebb; the
interest in legal history had greatly diminished, and the study of
foreign and comparative law disappeared.^ Thus, when in 1852
Jhering published the first volume of his famous treatise on the
Spirit of Roman Law he bitterly, but justly, remarked: " Die
Wissenschaft ist zur Landesjurisprudenz degradiert. Eine demiitigende,
unwurdige Form filr eine Wissenschaft f " ^^^
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL.
^
Walther Hug.
1"" Only in the field of commercial and maritime law did the interest in comparative
law remain alive. Comparative studies were continued, partly under the
influence of Goldschmidt's universal outlook, and partly because of the unification
movement. 3 LANDSBERG, op. cil. supra note 121, at 938; COHN, op. dt. supra
note 168, at 352; Ripert, The Progress of The Unification of Maritime Law in THE
PROGRESS OF THE LAW IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (1918) 396, 406.
ISO The work of the early i8oo's seems to be entirely forgotten in France and
Germany. L6vy-Ullmann does not mention Foelix and his periodical at all, nor
does Rabel give any reference to Mittermaier and his journal. See notes 6, 163,
supra.
'81 I JHERING, GEIST DES ROEMISCHEN RECHTS AUF DEN VERSCHIEDENEN STUFEN
SEINER ENTWICKLUNG (4th ed. 1878) 15.