Key legal question
Whether the Federal Court may order initiation or continuation of expropriation proceedings.
Extracted holding
No; only the Federal Council is competent to initiate expropriation proceedings, while the Federal Court only has the limited powers given by the Expropriation Act.
Extracted reasoning
The request concerned merely the opening of an expropriation procedure, not review of a compensation award already decided by a valuation commission, nor supervision of a commission refusing or incompletely performing its task.