Abstract: Departing from a paper published in 1956 by the influential politician Ion Gheorghe Maurer, at that time director of the Legal Research Institute in Bucharest, Traian Ionascu and Eugen A. Barasch have written in 1964 an important paper regarding the problem of the relation between form and substance in law. In dealing with this paper the following text will try to establish the connection between Ionaşcu, Barasch and the German Pandektensystem and to underline the political effects of the (tacite) reception of this system into the Romanian legal theory of that epoch.

Keywords: legal values, Pandektensystem, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, legal certainity, Mircea Djuvara