Judges Commons^™

The Chilean Constitutional Court And The 2005 Reform: A Castling Between Career Judges And Academics, Diego G. Pardow

Diego G. Pardow

Using a series of logistic regression analyses, this paper argues that the Chilean Constitutional Court is becoming more active in asserting constitutional rights. Before the reform, the pattern was favoring the incumbent government and deciding the cases by unanimity. After the reform the frequency of dissenting opinions increased, while the level of deference with the government decreased. We also argue, however, that any political analysis should proceed with caution. Career judges dominated the pre-reform Court, whereas justices coming from an academic environment were the ones filling those positions after the reform. Interestingly, Chilean judges have a long-standing reputation of being …