Foreign Law Guide

FOREIGN LAW GUIDE

Researching the Law of Switzerland

At a glance

Legal system family
Civil law, codified, in a federation of sovereign cantons. Article 3 of the Federal Constitution leaves the cantons sovereign so far as their sovereignty is not limited by the Constitution, and has them exercise every right not transferred to the Confederation. 4
Official gazette
Amtliche Sammlung des Bundesrechts and the Bundesblatt, published by the Federal Chancellery on the Fedlex platform. Article 15 of the Publications Act makes the version published on the platform authoritative. 1
Constitution in force
Bundesverfassung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft of 18 April 1999. The platform serves the consolidated text under a header giving its state as at 3 March 2024. 4
Language of the authoritative text
German, French and Italian together. Article 14 of the Publications Act has publication happen simultaneously in the three official languages and provides that, in the case of acts, the three versions are authoritative. 1

A Swiss federal act exists in three languages at once, and all three of them are the law. Article 14 of the Publications Act has publication take place simultaneously in the official languages German, French and Italian, and then adds the sentence that decides how any Swiss text is read: in the case of acts, the three versions are authoritative.

This is not a translation arrangement with a courtesy attached. Among the three there is no original and no translation. Where the German and the French wordings of a provision pull in different directions, neither is the error, and the question becomes one of interpretation across three equally binding texts rather than of correcting one against another. Anyone quoting a Swiss provision in a language other than the one they are writing in should quote the version they actually read, and say which it was.

Romansh is a national language and does not have that status. Article 4 of the Federal Constitution names four national languages, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Article 70 names three official languages of the Confederation, and adds that Romansh is an official language too in dealings with persons of Romansh speech. The Publications Act, in its provision on what else the platform carries, puts translations of the official publications, in Romansh or English in particular, into a category of their own.

Article 15 answers the second question a Swiss citation raises, which is which copy governs. For acts of the Confederation, for agreements between the Confederation and the cantons and for intercantonal agreements, the version published in the official compilation is authoritative. Where a text is published by reference, the version referred to is authoritative. And the version published on the platform is authoritative. For treaties and decisions of international law, the instrument itself says which version governs.

Article 1a puts the platform at the centre of the arrangement. Publication is effected centrally on a publicly accessible online platform, and in principle it must allow the successive versions of a text to be consulted, in a form a machine can read as well as a person. That second requirement came into force on 1 July 2022, six and a half years after the first. A machine readable history of every provision is an unusual thing for a publication statute to demand, and it is the reason Swiss federal law can be addressed by version date rather than only by act.

The addressing repays learning, because it is the fastest way into Swiss law and it is not written down where a researcher looks first. Every consolidated act on the platform carries a European Legislation Identifier, and the file behind it is served at a path built from the classified compilation number, the version date and the language. The constitutional text used on this page is the version at 3 March 2024. Change the date segment and the same act comes back as a different consolidation. Change the language segment and one of the three authoritative versions comes back instead.

One caution about that, found in the bytes rather than in any documentation. The file the platform serves at the German path for the Publications Act, at the version of 1 July 2022, contains the French text. The address says German, the file name says German, the document title says German, and the German title of the statute occurs nowhere in the document. The French and the Italian paths for the same version each return their own language, and both are cached here beside the German one, so the language segment is honoured elsewhere on the same host. This page cites the French file for what the act provides, the Italian file for the sentence that makes all three versions binding, and keeps the German one only as evidence of the mismatch.

Above all this the Constitution says something short and consequential. Article 3 leaves the cantons sovereign so far as their sovereignty is not limited by the Federal Constitution, and has them exercise every right not transferred to the Confederation. A Swiss question with no federal answer has a cantonal one instead, and each canton determines its own official languages, which article 70 leaves it free to do while asking it to keep the peace between the language communities by respecting the traditional linguistic composition of its territory and the settled linguistic minorities in it.

Article 14 does not stop at its first paragraph. It runs to six, and the five that follow are worth reading as a set rather than as a rule with an exception. The Federal Council may decide that texts published by reference need not appear in all three official languages, or in any of them, where their provisions impose no direct obligation on the persons concerned or where those persons use them only in the original language: that is how Swiss law absorbs a technical standard written in English without translating it. The Chancellery may decide that decisions or communications from the federal administration, or from a body of public or private law, are published only in the official language of the linguistic region concerned, where they are of exclusively local importance. Translation for consultation procedures is left to the consultation legislation, and publication in Romansh is left to article 11 of the Languages Act.

Those four narrow the reach of the three languages. The last of the five widens it: a text on the platform of major importance or of international interest may be published in further languages, English in particular. That is not the only way English reaches the platform: article 13a already has it carry translations of the official publications, Romansh and English named among them. Neither route makes the English version binding, and article 14 paragraph 1 is why. Article 16 then deals with the printed version of what is published there.

A last note on reaching any of this. The platform is a JavaScript application, and a plain request to any of its addresses returns the same seventy seven kilobyte shell, apologising in five languages for needing a browser that runs scripts. The documents sit underneath it at the file addresses described above and answer normally. The difference between a service that cannot be automated and one that merely looks that way is worth ten minutes of anybody's time.

Primary sources online

SOURCES

  1. Loi sur les publications officielles, RS 170.512, text as at 1 July 2022. Chancellerie federale suisse, Fedlex. https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/2004/745/20220701/fr/html/fedlex-data-admin-ch-eli-cc-2004-745-20220701-fr-html.html. Accessed 2026-08-30. The statute that settles the two questions a Swiss citation raises. Article 14 has publication take place simultaneously in the official languages German, French and Italian and provides that in the case of acts the three versions are authoritative. Article 15 makes the version published in the Recueil officiel authoritative for acts of the Confederation and for agreements between the Confederation and the cantons, and makes the version published on the platform authoritative; for treaties and decisions of international law it is the instrument itself that says which version governs. Article 1a, in force from 1 January 2016 with its second paragraph from 1 July 2022, requires publication to be centralised on a publicly accessible online platform and, in principle, to allow the successive versions of a text to be consulted in a machine readable form. Article 16 deals with the printed version. Article 14 runs to six paragraphs, so five follow the one that makes the three versions binding, and they do not all pull the same way. Paragraph 2 lets the Federal Council excuse a text published by reference from some or all of the three languages. Paragraph 3 lets the Chancellery confine a decision or communication of exclusively local importance to the language of the region concerned. Paragraph 4 leaves translation for consultation procedures to the consultation legislation and paragraph 5 leaves publication in Romansh to article 11 of the Languages Act of 5 October 2007. Paragraph 6 goes the other way: a text on the platform of major importance or of international interest may be published in further languages, English in particular. The first paragraph of article 14 is quoted above with the soft hyphen the platform sets inside the French word for German, which is why that quote could not be matched before the normaliser learned to strip the character.
  2. Legge sulle pubblicazioni ufficiali, RS 170.512, text as at 1 July 2022. Cancelleria federale svizzera, Fedlex. https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/2004/745/20220701/it/html/fedlex-data-admin-ch-eli-cc-2004-745-20220701-it-html.html. Accessed 2026-08-30. The same act at the same version date, on the Italian path, and it is here for two reasons. It is the second of the three equally binding versions, so article 14 can be read on this site in a language other than the one the French file gives it: the publication is made at the same time in the official languages German, French and Italian, and for normative acts each of the three versions is binding. And it is the control on the German path row below: the Italian file is in Italian and is a different length from both the French one and the file the German address returns, which is what makes that address a mismatch rather than a property of the whole host.
  3. The file Fedlex serves at the German path for RS 170.512, version of 1 July 2022. Chancellerie federale suisse, Fedlex. https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/2004/745/20220701/de/html/fedlex-data-admin-ch-eli-cc-2004-745-20220701-de-html.html. Accessed 2026-08-30. Cached as evidence of a mismatch rather than for the law in it. The address, the file name and the document title all say de, and the document served is the French text of the act. The German title of the same statute does not occur anywhere in the bytes, which is what the absence above asserts. The French and Italian paths for the same version return their own languages and differ from this file in length, so the language segment of the address is honoured elsewhere.
  4. Bundesverfassung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, consolidated text as at 3 March 2024. Schweizerische Bundeskanzlei, Fedlex. https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/1999/404/20240303/de/html/fedlex-data-admin-ch-eli-cc-1999-404-20240303-de-html.html. Accessed 2026-08-30. Trimmed extract of a page of 480,971 bytes. The header dates the constitution to 18 April 1999 and the served consolidation to 3 March 2024. Article 3 leaves the cantons sovereign so far as their sovereignty is not limited by the Federal Constitution and has them exercise every right not transferred to the Confederation. Article 4 names four national languages, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Article 70 names three official languages of the Confederation and adds Romansh for dealings with Romansh speakers, leaves each canton to determine its own official languages, and has the Confederation support the multilingual cantons and the measures of Graubunden and Ticino for Romansh and Italian.

Reviewed 2026-08-30. 4 sources cited on this page.