Swiss Federal Constitution of 1848

The Federal Constitution of 1848 was Switzerland's first federal constitution, promulgated on 12 September 1848 in the aftermath of the Sonderbund War of November 1847, and it transformed the country from a loose confederation of cantons into a single federal state. It preserved cantonal sovereignty except where it conflicted with federal authority, and created a bicameral federal legislature modeled on that of the United States, with a National Council standing in for the House of Representatives and a Council of States standing in for the Senate. Its adoption resolved the political crisis of the Regeneration period that had led to armed conflict between Switzerland's Protestant and Catholic cantons, and it built a lasting framework balancing a stronger central government with real cantonal autonomy. That framework carried Switzerland through more than a century of amendments and still underlies the country's current constitution, adopted in 1999. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/