Swiss jurist and early anthropological writer whose book Das Mutterrecht (1861; “Mother Right”) is regarded as a major contribution to the development of modern social anthropology.

Bachofen was a professor of the history of Roman law at the University of Basel (1841–45) and also a judge of the Basel criminal court (1842–66). After writing two works on Roman civil law (1847 and 1848), he traveled to Italy and Greece and began earnestly to study the symbolism of ancient tombs, thereby gaining significant insights into early forms of human life, law, and religion.

In Das Mutterrecht, Bachofen presented the first attempt to advance a scientific history of the family as a social institution and suggested that mother right preceded father right. Though he based his theorizing on Greek and Roman classics, his previously unpublished manuscripts in his Gesammelte Werke, 10 vol. (1943 ff.; “Collected Works”), show that in 1869 he planned to revise Das Mutterrecht on the basis of wider evidence and had begun 15 years of study of nearly every known culture. From 1872 he increasingly adopted the views of American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan on kinship.