About Me

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fredericborel66[at]gmail.com


I was born in the French-speaking part of Switzerland in 1966, attended and completed Law School in that country (University of Neuchatel, 1986-1990, cum laude), and passed the Swiss Bar Exam in early 1993, after the two-year mandatory apprenticeship in a private law firm. I passed the California MPRE in 2010.


I am inspired by the comments made by Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Sandra Day O'Connor in her book The Majesty of the Law (2004 Random House, Copyright 2003 by Arizona Community Foundation). Here are a few quotes:

We honor the Constitution and its Framers when we run for legislative or executive office, write a letter to the President, our Governor, or our Legislator, take a constitutional case to court, or teach our children the meaning of the document, and when we argue among our friends and neighbors over the application of constitutional commands to modern life (p. 47).


Personal relationships lie at the heart of lawyer's work. Despite our vast technological advances, the human dimension remains constant, and these professional responsibilities will endure (p. 226).

We need deeper understanding of foreign cultures. We need to know to survive in an increasingly multinational environment (p. 231).

Judges and lawyers can benefit from broadening our horizons. We often have much to learn from other juridictions. For example, even after Erie v. Tompkins (304 U.S. 64 (1938)) and the demise of general federal common law in 1938, the federal courts remain charged with the task of developing pockets of common law in discrete areas, like admiralty and maritime jurisdiction (p. 234).

Other legal systems continue to innovate, to experiment and to find new solutions to the new legal problems that arise each day; they offer much from which we can learn and benefit (p. 234).

One of the most respected Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, once observed, "the life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience" (p. 262).


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