The Civil Law Tradition, the Pinochet Constitution and Judge Eugenio Valenzuela
Date
2021
Type:
Book chapter
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Abstract
The depersonalization of the courts that the civil law tradition encourages makes it less
likely that judges in those types of jurisdictions will become towering judges or, at least, it
will make their influential jurisprudence anonymous or less visible. By exploring the
experience of Eugenio Valenzuela, a Chilean judge that served at the Constitutional Court
in the 80s, this Chapter shows that, despite the limitations of the civil law tradition,
sometimes it is nonetheless possible to identify a towering judge in a civil law country. The
author studies how judge Valenzuela led a group of judges within the Chilean
Constitutional Court and succeeded in challenging critical pieces of legislation enacted by
the military Junta during the Pinochet dictatorship. By showing how the Valenzuela
jurisprudence helped to advance the transition to democracy against the interests of the
authoritarian regime, the author claims that founding moments in fragile institutional
settings of civil law countries may provide an opportunity for a political towering judge to
emerge.
Description
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Citation
Verdugo, Sergio, The Civil Law Tradition, the Pinochet Constitution and Judge Eugenio Valenzuela (January 10, 2021). Contribution to the collective volume on "Towering Judges: A Comparative Study of Constitutional Judges," edited by Iddo Porat and Rehan Abeyratne (Cambridge University Press), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3763442 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3763442
Keywords
Towering Judge, Civil Law Tradition, Eugenio Valenzuela, Chilean Constitutional Court