Johann Caspar (also Kaspar) Bluntschli was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1808. In 1826-1827 he studied Roman Law at the Political Institute of Zurich under Professor F.L. Keller. He received his university training in Berlin in 1827-1828 under F. C. Savigny, Carl Ritter, G. Phillips, and Professors Rudorff and August Bockh, and continued in Bonn under Berthold Niebuhr, Tugge, and J.C. Hasse (1828-1829). After a winter in Paris, he returned to Zurich in 1830. He began that year to lecture on Roman Law in the Political Institute. At the same time, he became a secretary of the Government and a practicing lawyer. In 1831, he published Das Volk und der Souveran. In 1833, Bluntschli became Associate Professor and in 1836 Professor in the newly founded University of Zurich. His Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte der Stadt und Landschaft Zurich was published in 1838-1839; Geschichte des Republik Zurich in 1847; and in 1846-1848 his Geschichte des Schweizerischen Bundesrechts. He was commissioned by the Great Council of Zurich, whose membership he joined in 1837, to prepare a civil code for the canton. He prepared the Code and it was adopted almost without change in 1853.

Bluntschli was called to the University of Munich in 1848. There, he devoted his energies to political science and German jurisprudence. In 1852 he published Allegemeine Staatsrecht, which was revised in 1875 as Lehre vom modernen Staat. Another work which Bluntschli started in Munich (1857) and finished in Heidelberg (1870) was Deutsches Staatsworterbuch.

In 1861 Bluntschli went to the University of Heidelberg, received appointment to the Upper House of the Baden Diet and was made a Privy Councillor. An advocate of the constitutional reforms of Baden in 1864, Bluntschli also spoke out early for German unity. He was for many years President of the Grand Synod of Baden, and was chosen first President of the Institut de Droit International.

Johann Kaspar Bluntschli died suddenly on October 21, 1881.