The basic premise of the German historical school is that law is not to be regarded as an arbitrary grouping of regulations laid down by some authority.
In the development of a legal system, is it the professional duty of lawyers – in the sense of the division of labor in society – to base their academic work on law on ascertaining the will of the people.
The Romanists, to whom Savigny also belonged, held that the Volksgeist springs from the reception of the Roman law, while the Germanists (Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, Jakob Grimm, Georg Beseler, Otto von Gierke) saw medieval German law as the expression of the German Volksgeist.
Georg Friedrich Puchta and Bernhard Windscheid continued the Romanist vein founded by Savigny, leading to the so-called Pandektenwissenschaft which is seen as Begriffsjurisprudenz ('conceptual jurisprudence').
Hugo misinterprets his teacher Kant by supposing that because we cannot know what is true, we consequently allow the untrue, if it exists at all, to pass as fully valid.