History

Since the University of Zurich was founded in 1833, jurisprudence has been an intrinsic part of its identity: besides theology, philosophy, and medicine, the Faculty of Political Sciences was one of the first subject areas at the new Universitas Turicensis. The increasing significance of jurisprudence was sharply emphasized in 1920 when the Faculty of Political Sciences was converted into the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences.

The decision to make law, business, economics, and associated subjects independent of the other faculties in 1969 gave the Faculty an organizational framework by dividing it into a legal and a business and economics department. In 1992, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Business, Economics, and Informatics emerged from these two departments.

Compared with its present size of over 3,700 students and more than 50 professorial chairs, the Faculty, which numbered five professors and 26 students, was very modest at the outset. Yet with Friedrich Ludwig Keller (1799-1860) and subsequently Johann Caspar Bluntschli (1808-1881), the most important figures in the establishment of modern Swiss jurisprudence, the Faculty had outstanding and influential jurists among its ranks in this early phase. Members of the Faculty also decisively shaped jurisprudence in the 20th century, such as Fritz Fleiner (1867-1937) in administrative law, Zaccaria Giacometti (1893-1970) in constitutional law, or Arthur Meier-Hayoz (1922-2003) in civil law.

However, Johann Caspar Bluntschli (1808-1881), a scholar who was influential and widely respected in the German-speaking world of jurisprudence, also worked at the Faculty, and some of his teachings were rooted in the "early anti-Semitic spirit of the age"¹. However, the history of the Faculty also includes tragic mistakes, as in the case of Emilie Kempin-Spyri (1853-1901), who only received her teaching license in 1891 after a long dispute on the grounds of her gender (Venia legendi of Emilie Kempin-Spyri). The memory of this failure and the responsibility of science to the spirit of the times is as much a part of the Faculty's present as the knowledge of its achievements and successes.

¹_{Marcel Senn, Rassistische und antisemitische Elemente im Rechtsdenken von Johann Caspar Bluntschli, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Germanistische Abteilung 110 (1993), 372-405, 404.}

Prof. Dr. Andreas Thier
Chair of Legal History, Ecclesiastical Law, Legal Theory, and Civil Law

(The RAI building, the former Chemical Institute of the University of Zurich)

The RAI building was awarded the "Chemical Landmark Award" in 2016. Read more about the history of the RAI building and the award ceremony here. For more information, see the Exhibition Poster on the Building History of the Chemical Landmark Rämistrasse (PDF, 14 MB). Building History Chemical Landmark Rämistrasse.