First published in German in 1872 as Der Kampf ums Recht, the work attracted wide attention and was reissued in several revised editions and translated into a dozen foreign languages. The author was a renowned scholar of Roman law who wrote in a lively style. One legal historian called him "the Mark Twain of German jurisprudence." In this essay he discusses what the law is and how the law changes. It is a classic in the perennial struggle to make the law a means for achieving social change.
