When Vaudois dominated the Federal Council: the legal age in Vaud

The increasing power of Savoie from 1247 onwards and the introduction by the count of an administration by rural and castle bailiffs and tax collectors, who often followed written orders, mixed in the territory of Vaud with an already complex oral jurisprudence of the various rulers.

What made matters worse was that the law was not the same everywhere and that there was sometimes even competition between the different legal systems. Lawyers trained in Roman law at distant universities were an exception at the time: according to Germanic custom of the past, a ‘civil’ lawyer was given preference for representation before the court. In historical sources these advocates are called ‘forerunners’.

In the 14th century there was a break. At this time, legal scholars well versed in written law moved from southern cities to Vaud. That was a good thing, because the plague threatened with a huge loss of oral knowledge. The great wave of plague spread across the Rhône from 1347 onwards, sweeping away notaries, clerks, lawyers and prosecutors.

The Bishop of Lausanne, Aymon de Cossonay, had customary law written down in 1368 to preserve and better enforce the city law. Are Checkered General, as Lausanne’s city statute was called, was created in the middle of a health crisis. It is an important source for researchers of the Middle Ages in western Switzerland, as it often contains very old customs.

Two years later, on May 15, 1370, the bishop also approved the regulations Brotherhood of Sinterklaas, the patron saint of all paralegals and lawyers. This brotherhood brought together not only the experts in canon law who had the force of law for ecclesiastical regulations, but also the few lawyers with a bar title and the scribes of common law. This first lawyers’ guild arose from the distinction between speakers and lawyers.

Lawyers, who were still rare during the Savoyard period, gained some reputation during the Bernese rule. The representatives of the city on the Aare organized the heterogeneous corpus of official documents and customs, which until then, from 1536, continuously shaped the daily life of the Vaud population. But it was only with the end of the Ancien Régime and the establishment of the modern state after the Napoleonic period that the legal profession in Vaud gained social and political importance.

The 19th century was a period of legal influence in Vaud – a period of many big ideas and a few smaller projects. The corpus of laws grew steadily, widening the gap between the cities as centers of academic knowledge and home to experts in decrees and paragraphs, and the country, which was still largely anchored in time-tested traditions.

This legal abundance also catapulted countless lawyers onto the political scene, not only cantonally, but from 1848 also nationally. At the end of the century, an attentive observer would probably have noted without much surprise that the canton of Vaud was most often represented in the Federal Council, with federal councilors such as Henri Druey, Louis Ruchonnet, Constant Fornerod and Victor Ruffy.

Vaud formed the Federal Council in the 19th century. Before Zurich or Bern. Of the 36 members of government elected in the 19th century, seven came from Vaud. And everyone worked as a lawyer. All in all, this Vaudois influence at the federal level is a logical consequence of the intense activity of the canton’s founders and their successors over the course of the century, who transformed the new state into a huge legal workshop.

Criminal law, fundamental rights guaranteed by successive constitutions, tax law, fundamental law, economic law, administrative law – all aspects of law were reconsidered, discussed, confirmed and contested several times during the long political duel that the liberals and radicals waged for decades. Not surprisingly, lawyers were the strongest supporters of the new laws. The symbolic culmination of Vaud’s legal excellence was the creation of the Federal Court in Lausanne, based on the Federal Constitution of 1874.

On November 25, 1880, a vote was taken on a proposed bar regulation, which according to tradition was far removed from the debates between the two political camps of the canton. The Vaud Constitution followed five years later, in which the principle of the separation of church and state was adopted to comply with the provisions of the Federal Constitution of 1874.

18 years later, history was made all over the world. At the beginning of this year, Zola published his open letter «You accuse…!», which was intended to divide France; On September 10, Empress Elisabeth of Austria was assassinated in Geneva and on Saturday, December 10, 1898, the Spanish-American War ended with the Peace of Paris. On the day that American and Spanish diplomats signed the treaty that expelled the Spanish from the New World and gave the United States a colonial empire, Vaud’s 40 lawyers formed a representative professional association to serve in the newly created Swiss Bar Association are represented.

In October 1898, the association, which consisted of companies from Zurich, Bern, Lucerne, Basel and Geneva, set itself the goal of establishing cantonal branches in those cantons where law firms had not yet organized themselves. Under the leadership of Auguste Dupraz (1832-1906) and Louis Berdez (1839-1905), the longest-serving Vaud lawyers who were considered greats by their colleagues, the law was officially established on December 10, 1898. Association of Lawyers in Vaud Founded. It was also the starting point for the modernization of supervision of the profession.

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Auguste Dupraz was appointed first president: president and not chairman! This was the wish of the founders, which they expressed in Article 4 of the Chamber’s statutes. They undoubtedly preferred club terminology to guild terminology. During the first half of the 20th century, increasing competition between lawyers and other legal practitioners at both Vaud and federal levels fueled a sense of defense of the profession, leading to a more elitist attitude of the Chamber.

Internal debates repeatedly revolved around both the appointment of the chairman and the dress code for lawyers during arguments, because ‘tradition’ was no less important in the 20th century than in previous centuries.

Despite discussions about titles and dress codes, Vaud residents did not forget another tradition, humanism. During the First World War, the Chamber repeatedly intervened unofficially on behalf of Belgian refugees in Switzerland, prompting protests from some members who claimed to maintain their neutrality. But these were nipped in the bud.

In March 1917, the former chairman Aloïs de Meuron (1854–1934) even spoke out against the deportation of French and Belgian citizens to Germany in the National Council, where he had served since 1899. He delivered a fiery speech reminiscent of André Malraux’s 1964 speech that deserved history: “You have to know when to put moral interests above material interests. And to those who fear it, we answer that one should never hesitate to fulfill a moral duty of the higher conscience, whatever the consequences.”

This spirit would also become evident during World War II. The Jewish question caused lively debates in the House, especially between Marcel Regamey, the founder of the movement Renaissance Vaudoise, and former chairman Charles Gorgerat. The chamber ultimately decided on passive resistance against the prejudices shared by many people at the time. However, she was careful not to comment on the measures taken by the Vaud government.