Of the Ageless Vocation for Legislation and Jurisprudence

The article deals with the relationship between legislation and jurisprudence based on the claims in Savigny’s “Of the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence”. The aforementioned work has been included in the discussion of when, how and by whom a civil code should be made in Germany, with some determinations regarding the nature of law. In these determinations, it is underlined that in addition to the historical nature of law, there should be certain development of legal consciousness in order to make a code. The emphasis of the school’s arguments on the historical and local characteristics of law has resulted in the failure to pay enough attention to the function of jurisprudence and its determinations about the non-local characteristics of law. In this direction, the article aims to draw attention to the fact that the claims in the aforementioned work have a value beyond its age, and finally to discuss the position of legal science and the lawyers against the legislature. In this context, Savigny’s arguments that bring the legislation and jurisprudence against each other are brought to the fore, not universal-historical dichotomy. Afterward, the position of jurisprudence on the creation of law was discussed. It has been pointed out that a voluntarist conception is untenable for jurisprudence.