Historical school of law — Savigny's view, Puchta's view, Main's view

Nobody sat down and invented Marathi, or the way a Mumbai family arranges a wedding, or the rule that a village's grazing land is shared. They grew. The historical school asks whether law is like that too: a slow growth out of a people's life, which lawmakers may record but cannot simply design. If so, a hurried code copied from another country is a mistake. That idea, argued in Germany in the early nineteenth century and carried to India by Henry Maine, is what this topic is about.

In two minutes

The historical school holds that law is not made by a sovereign's command or by reason but grows out of the history, customs and spirit of each people, and must be studied in that setting.

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