Post-Pinochet democratic transition expanded, not limited, judicial constitutional power.

Evidence

One might have expected that the end of the junta and the election of a democratic government coalition, La Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia, would mark a break with the ‘limited’ or ‘protected’ democracy instituted by Guzmán and supported by his neoliberal allies. Quite the opposite is true. As Fernando Atria notes: ‘Democratic politics is no longer seen as the best insurance against human rights violations, but as the primary danger.’ As Atria suggests, while in some contexts it may be reasonable to assume that judges should protect individual rights and the constitution from democratic politics, in Chile, whose key problem has been authoritarian anti-democratic tendencies, including in the judiciary, this focus is difficult to justify. It was Pinochet’s 1980 constitution that first gave judges a substantial role in adjudicating matters which, prior to the coup, belonged to the political process. But 2005 amendments to the constitution, after the ‘return to democracy’, dramatically expanded the powers of the constitutional court to determine the constitutionality of legislation, in the name of protecting human rights. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 373

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of judicialization-of-politics literature and human-rights discourse critique; also echoes the broader tension between democracy and institutional restraints central to recent debates on market ethics. — connects to: Democratic leaders accept constitutional limits and autonomous state organs — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 108
• SEED: Angle: how ‘human rights protection’ became the legitimating language for restraining democracy in post-authoritarian states — Chile as the paradigmatic case for a critique of rights-based judicialization.

Broader Connections

• Democratic leaders accept constitutional limits and autonomous state organs #qualifies (0.80) — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 108