Swiss law is a set of rules which constitutes the law in

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

Structure and Sources

There is a hierarchy of political levels which reflects the legal and constitutional character of Switzerland. The Federal law (, , ) consist of the following parts: * International law, * Internal law, According to the current Federal Constitution (SR 101 Art. 1, 3) and the principle of subsidiarity (Switzerland) (SR 101 Art. 5a) and the ''Title 3 Confederation, Cantons and Communes'' (SR 101), the

Cantons of Switzerland The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the Federated state, member states of the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. The nucleus of the Swiss Confederacy in the form of the first three confederate allies used to be referred to as the . Two important ...

"''are sovereign except to the extent that their sovereignty is limited by the Federal Constitution. They exercise all rights that are not vested in the Confederation''" and "''the principle of subsidiarity must be observed in the allocation and performance of state tasks''". The Internal law (, , , ) consists of the following parts: #State - People - Authorities (SR 1) #Private law - Administration of civil justice - Enforcement (SR 2) #Criminal law - Administration of criminal justice - Execution of sentences (SR 3) #Education - Science - Culture (SR 4) #National defence (SR 5) #Finance (SR 6) #Public works - Energy - Transport (SR 7) #Health - Employment - Social security (SR 8) #Economy - Technical cooperation (SR 9) Some major aspects are: * the

Swiss Federal Constitution The Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation (SR 10; (BV); (Cst.); (Cost.); ) of 18 April 1999 (SR 101) is the third and current federal constitution of Switzerland. It establishes the Swiss Confederation as a federal republic of ...

(SR 10), * acts of parliament ("laws") or by-laws, *

delegated legislation Primary legislation and secondary legislation (the latter also called delegated legislation or subordinate legislation) are two forms of law, created respectively by the legislative and executive branches of governments in representative democ ...

, regulations, or ordinances, and * adjudication (binding decisions) by competent tribunals.

Publications

The federal government publishes legal instruments in three principal official publications: * the '' Systematic Compilation'' (, , , ) is the official compilation of all federal laws, ordinances, international and intercantonal treaties that are in force, * the '' Official Compilation of Federal Legislation'' (German: , AS; French: , RO; Italian: , RU) is the federal

gazette A gazette is an official journal, a newspaper of record, or simply a newspaper. In English and French speaking countries, newspaper publishers have applied the name ''Gazette'' since the 17th century; today, numerous weekly and daily newspapers ...

, and * the '' Federal Gazette'' (German: , BBl; French: , FF; Italian: , FF) publishes various official texts of the federal government. All three publications are issued in the three official languages of Switzerland:

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

, French and

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

. All three language editions are equally valid. They are published by the

Federal Chancellery of Switzerland The Federal Chancellery of Switzerland is a department-level agency of the federal administration of Switzerland. It is the staff organisation of the federal government, the Federal Council (Switzerland), Federal Council. Since 2024, it has bee ...

in the form of weekly supplements to

loose leaf A loose leaf (also loose leaf paper, filler paper or refill paper) is a piece of paper of any kind that is not bound in place, or available on a continuous roll, and may be punched and organized as ring-bound (in a ring binder) or disc-bound. Lo ...

binders. Since 1999, they are also made available on the Internet in

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

format (as well as

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

in the case of the SR/RS).

Some particular laws

Civil code

The

Swiss Civil Code The Swiss Civil Code (SR/RS 210, ; ; ; ) is a portion of the second part (SR/RS 2) of the internal Swiss law ("Private law - Administration of civil justice - Enforcement") that regulates the codified law ruling in Switzerland and relationshi ...

(SR 21) was adopted on 10 December 1907 (Status as of 1 January 2016, SR 210) and has been in force since 1912. It was largely influenced by the

German civil code German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

, and partly influenced by the French civil code, but the majority of

comparative law Comparative law is the study of differences and similarities between the law and legal systems of different countries. More specifically, it involves the study of the different legal systems (or "families") in existence around the world, includ ...

scholars (such as K. Zweigert and Rodolfo Sacco) argue that the Swiss code derives from a distinct paradigm of civil law.

Criminal law

The

Swiss Criminal Code The Swiss Criminal Code (SR/RS 311, , , , ) is a portion of the third part (SR/RS 3) of the Swiss law, internal Swiss law ("Private law - Administration of civil justice - Enforcement") that regulates the criminal code in Switzerland. The orig ...

(SR 311) of 21 December 1937 (Status as of 1 July 2016, SR 311.0) goes back to an 1893 draft by Carl Stooss. It has been in effect since 1942. Among the notable changes to earlier Swiss criminal law was the abolition of capital punishment in Switzerland and the legalization of homosexual acts between adults (until 1990, the

age of consent The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to Human sexual activity, sexual acts. Consequently, an adult who engages in sexual activity with a person younger than the age of consent is un ...

for homosexual acts remained set at 20 years, compared to 16 years for heterosexual acts). The code has been revised numerous times since 1942. The most recent revision (as of 2010), in effect since 2007, introduced the possibility to convert short prison sentences (below one year) into fines, calculated based on a daily rate which has to be established based on the "personal and economic situation of the convict at the time of the verdict", with an upper limit set at CHF 3000 per day of the sentence. Practically all prison sentences shorter than one year have since been converted into fines, conditional sentences (

parole Parole, also known as provisional release, supervised release, or being on paper, is a form of early release of a prisoner, prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated ...

) to conditional fines. This has caused controversy because the result is that lighter offences not punishable by imprisonment always result in unconditional fines, while more severe offences now often result in conditional fines that do not need to be paid at all. The Federal Council in October 2010 announced its intention to revert to the earlier system, and all large parties expressed at least partial support.Bedingte Geldstrafe bald abgeschafft?
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References

External links

Classified Compilation of Federal Legislation
*Marc Thommen (Ed.)
Introduction to Swiss Law
Berlin/Bern 2018 {{DEFAULTSORT:Swiss Law