Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut

In 1802 he published a short criticism of Feuerbach's theory of criminal law, which recalls in many ways the speculations of Jeremy Bentham.

[2] In 1802 Thibaut was called to Jena, where he spent three years and wrote, in Friedrich Schiller's summer-house, his chief work, System des Pandektenrechts (1803), which ran into many editions.

At the invitation of the grand-duke of Baden, Thibaut went to Heidelberg to fill the chair of civil law and to assist in organizing the university; and he never left the town, though in later years, as his fame grew, he was offered places at Göttingen, Munich and Leipzig.

Savigny took up the challenge thus thrown down when he wrote Über den Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft (1814); and a long controversy as to points not very clearly defined took place.

[2] The framers of the new German civil code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch) in 1879 owed the arrangement of their matter in no small degree to Thibaut's method and clear classification, but beyond this, the code, based on the civil law of the several German states, which was adroitly blended by the usus pandectarum into an harmonious whole, does not reflect his influence.

[2] Thibaut's legal work was soon superseded by that of his successor, Karl Adolf von Vangerow (1805–1870), and his textbooks fell out of use.

John Austin, who owed much to him, describes him as one "who for penetrating acuteness, rectitude of judgment and depth of learning and eloquence of exposition, may be placed by the side of Friedrich Carl von Savigny, at the head of all living civilians.