Margrith Bigler-Eggenberger was born on 14 March 1933 in Henau (today Uzwil), Canton of St. Gallen. After reading law in Geneva and Zurich she received her doctorate in 1959 in Zurich with a dissertation on criminal law, the sociological orientation of which demonstrated the importance of societal realities in her views regarding the law already at that age.
In 1961 she was admitted to the St. Gallen bar (which required granting of an exception, as she had lost her St. Gallen citizenship through marriage, having a shared place of residence with her husband in the Canton of Bern). She then worked as an attorney and court clerk. From 1966 she taught social security law at the University of St. Gallen (at that time called the Handelshochschule or ‘School of Commerce’) and submitted proposals for family law amendments to Swiss Civil Code. Also in 1966, the Government Council of the Canton of St. Gallen appointed her as Social Security Court justice in connection with the reorganization of the canton’s social security court. A normal appointment procedure was not possible in St. Gallen due to lacking voting and election rights. In its Quinche ruling of 1957 (BGE 83 I 177) the Federal Supreme Court had rejected the inclusion of women in the electoral register without the existence of a corresponding constitutional basis (see Part II. E. 4.). From 1969 she was a member of the Federal AHV/IV Commission for old-age, survivors and disability pensions, and in 1972 she was elected to the Parliament of the Canton of St. Gallen. Following the introduction of voting and election rights for women in federal matters in 1971, Margrith Bigler was appointed as the first female alternate justice on the Federal Supreme Court in 1972, and then as the first regular female justice in 1974. During her term as federal justice and after her resignation in 1994 she was a prolific writer on social security, family law and gender equality. At that time the constitution and laws were being amended to reflect gender equality, an outcome to which Margrith Bigler-Eggenberger’s writings contributed in substantial fashion. She reported frequently on her experiences and the difficulties she faced in dealing with some of her colleagues as the first– and for seventeen years the only – female federal justice. Her colleagues were unaccustomed to working with a female fellow on equal terms. In 1994 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Gallen, and also from the University of Fribourg in 2003. https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/032482/2002-10-17/; swisscovery – margrith bigler-eggenberger (slsp.ch); https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrith_Bigler-Eggenberger)
Extract from: The first female judge at the federal court (Part 1. C. 3.3)