Simion Bărnuţiu – Pioneer in the development of the law sciences and of the legal education in Romania

The author analyses in this paper S. Bărnuţiu’s contribution to the establishment of the legal education and to the development of the sciences of the Law in the Romanian area during the mid-19^th century. Adept of the natural law philosophy, ardent promotor of human and people’s rights, Bărnuţiu remains a personality of reference in the Romanians’ history not only for being the political leader and ideologist of the Transylvanian 1848 Revolution, but also for establishing the legal education at the University of Iasi by inspiring himself from the curriculum of the profile schools of law from the Western Europe. Having a unitary conception on the law and on the history of law, considering the law from a systemic perspective, Bărnuţiu contributed into the edification of a modern, constitutional, and democratic State in the united Romanian Principalities.