The history of the Faculty of Law
Like the Faculty of Theology, the Faculty of Law has a history dating back to the time of the Council of Basel. While the teaching of ecclesiastical law was central to the Council University, soon after its founding a sustained rivalry emerged between the two main disciplines of ecclesiastical and secular law. Since the seventeenth century, the scope of work for members of the faculty in Basel has increasingly expanded. The catalog of subjects taught has grown, while professors have also faced an increasing number of tasks. Both aspects have been part of a development that has persisted to this day, albeit not continuously.
At the founding of the University of Basel in 1460, representatives of secular law (called legistics) had only one chair, while ecclesiastical (canon) law was given three professorships. This privileging of canon law was decisively challenged by the renowned legists, recruited preferably from Italy and a humanistic context in which secular law had already achieved significant autonomy. A conflict with the teachers of canon law, most of whom were appointed from Germany, was unavoidable and fiercely fought.
Between theoretical debates and practical effectiveness
In the sixteenth century, as secular law began to assert itself over ecclesiastical law, Italian legal views once again became the center of a dispute. The Italian method of jurisprudence, which worked with extensive commentary, was challenged by a school that emerged in France, calling for a return to the legal source text. In Basel, Bonifacius Amerbach (1495–1562) developed a mediating position in the disagreement, which would prevail throughout the Swiss Confederation.
The name Amerbach is also closely associated with the beginning of another development: Bonifacius and his son Basilius maintained an intensive combination of academic teaching and practical endeavors, which would define life at the Faculty of Law for centuries to come. The connection to practice existed mainly in the creation of legal opinions for private and public clients, who approached the faculty not only from Basel but from various European regions. In the seventeenth century, this task demanded so much attention that an expansion of the faculty seemed inevitable. To relieve the professors, younger assessors were brought in to write these legal opinions and free up more capacity for academic teaching.
Specialization and efforts to obtain professorships
In 1706, new subjects were assigned to the three existing professorships. To align the faculty more closely with the international developments in the field of law, natural law was also included in the official curriculum. However, there was a noticeable decline in the number of students who could appreciate such innovations. Between 1798 and 1815, only eighteen students enrolled to study law. The teaching staff consequently shrank, and by 1817 the curriculum was covered by a single instructor.
The University Law of 1818 proposed three professorships, but adverse circumstances, most significantly the division of Basel into two separate cantons in 1833, led to prolonged vacancies. In 1835, once again, there was but a single professor in the faculty. It is thus hardly surprising that the University Act passed that year foresaw a merely preparatory role for Basel’s Faculty of Law. The establishment of the Free Academic Society by law professor Andreas Heusler in the same year nevertheless financed the appointment of additional professors through external funding, significantly aiding the gradual expansion of the faculty.
Such expansion was necessary, as Swiss federal law had grown in scope and importance since the foundation of the federal state in 1848, requiring more comprehensive approaches in legal education. The focus here was initially public law, followed by private law around the turn of the twentieth century, with a first professorship established in 1904. From 1904 until the 1960s, the faculty had five statutory chairs but could hire additional instructors with extra funds – an option it increasingly took advantage of. Especially over the last fifty years, there has been a steady increase in faculty members, though this expansion has not kept pace with the rapid increase in student enrollments which has continued unabated.