Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut

Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut (born Jan. 4, 1772, Hameln, Hanover—died March 28, 1840, Heidelberg, Baden) was a German jurist and leader of the philosophical school that maintained the tradition of natural law in a spirit of moderate rationalism. He is remembered chiefly because his call for the codification of German law, reflecting the rise of German nationalism after the Napoleonic wars, was vigorously opposed by F.K. von Savigny, leader of the historical school of jurisprudence.

Thibaut studied law at Göttingen, Königsberg, and Kiel, where, in 1796, he qualified as teacher of law. He was appointed professor of civil law at Kiel in 1798, then at Jena in 1802, and at Heidelberg in 1806. In 1834 he became a member of the court of arbitration of the German Confederation.

Thibaut’s main publications are Theorie der logischen Auslegung des römischen Rechts (1799; “Theory of the Logical Interpretation of Roman Law”) and System des Pandektenrechts (1803; the general part translated as An Introduction to the Study of Jurisprudence, 1879), which long remained one of the leading textbooks of Roman law applied as the common law of Germany. In 1814 he published an essay “On the Need for a Civil Code for Germany,” inspired by patriotic sentiment and rationalist belief in the merits of codification. Also a serious student of music, he wrote Über Reinheit der Tonkunst (1825; On Purity in Musical Art, 1877).