Jhering e i "Common Lawyers": uno sguardo oltre Atlantico

The article examines, from a historical and comparative perspective, the reception, influence, and appropriation of Rudolf von Jhering’s thought within the common law world. The article highlights the marked asymmetry between the wide resonance Jhering’s ideas enjoyed in the United States and their more limited impact in Great Britain. Jhering’s critique of conceptualism constituted an important, though not explicitly acknowledged, reference point in Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s "The Common Law" (1881). The analysis then focuses on Roscoe Pound, who selectively drew on Jhering to articulate his sociological jurisprudence. In Pound’s work, the critique of Lochner-era formalism is grounded in references to Jhering; at the same time, however, Pound sought to preserve the autonomy of the common law tradition and therefore pursued a distinct strategy in his use of Jhering’s ideas. Finally, the article traces Jhering’s legacy in American legal realism and twentieth-century contract theory, highlighting both the fertility and the tensions of an instrumental conception of law whose legacy remains central and contested in contemporary legal debate.