The Americanization of Swiss Legal Culture: Highlights of Cultural Encounters in an Evolving Transatlantic History of Law

Abstract

We have witnessed a sharp rise in the quest for a methodologically sound analysis of the “migration,”1 “transfer,”2 and “borrowing”3 of concepts between different legal systems.4 At the time of its foundation as a modern federal state in 1848, the Swiss Confederation (Switzerland) formed a republican island in an ocean of monarchies in the heart of Europe. The foundation of the United States of America, in turn, may be viewed as the first large-scale experiment in federal republicanism in the modern era, having been initiated at a time when what today constitutes Switzerland was a rather loose confederation of (semi-)sovereign republics.5 This backdrop marks an important starting point for what Jens Drolshammer, the editor of the volume under review, refers to in his introductory essay as “‘travels’ and ‘impacts.’”6 The term “travels” describes the exchange of political and legal concepts between the two countries whereas “impacts” denotes the influence of American law on Swiss legal culture and vice versa.7 An example of an “impact” on American law is the Progressive Era adoption in various American states of Swiss-inspired instruments such as popular initiatives and referenda.8 It was in the aftermath of the two World Wars that, according to Drolshammer, the tide turned and “Swiss law and legal culture” entered into an ongoing yet widely unnoticed “process of Americanization.”9