The historical school of Law and the Austrian school

The influence of Savigny on Menger, Leoni and Hayek

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to investigate the influence of the Historical School of Law, and more specifically of his most prominent representative, Friedrich Karl von Savigny, on some of the main theorists of the Austrian School of Economy: Carl Menger, Bruno Leoni and Friedrich A. Hayek. Savigny proclaimed the absolute historical character of Law and, therefore, the need that it has to be discovered and apprehended from manifestations of what was called the spirit
of the people, rather than created. Despite being ignored in the twentieth century by legal scholars, the Historical School of Law has remained alive in the works of Menger, Leoni and Hayek, who retrieved the teachings of Savigny and the Roman legal tradition and integrated them into their theory of social processes.