Switzerland as a federal state is often cited as a political entity where minorities are well accommodated. While this might be true for the past the proposed paper is asking how religious and linguistic minorities are accommodated in contemporary Switzerland. Do minorities have the possibility of self-determination on the basis of religious and linguistic diversity? In following liberal political theory, Lijphart (1995) and Kymlicka (2007) the papers claims that first, self-determination of linguistic and religious minorities in Switzerland is only possible for those minorities, which were part of the conflict driven foundation of the federal state due to the religiously motivated civil war (Sonderbundskrieg) in 1848. And second that the freedom of minorities’ self-determination is only legitimate within the liberal constitutional framework of the state based on individual human rights. In analysing the Swiss case the paper first supports the claim that new linguistic minorities are pre-determined, whereas the statement of a pre-determination of religious minorities can’t be confirmed. However, it turns out to be buttressed that self-rule of religious minorities is only regarded as legitimate in the framework of liberal constitution in respect of equal individual human rights. As a consequence religious minorities’ self-rule is attained through a joint effect of basic individual rights, public and civil law. Federalism in the Swiss case helps as a structural variable to promote self-determination of “new” religious minorities, whereas it pre-determines the self-rule of new linguistic minorities.
