Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T11:32:40.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - The Civil Law Tradition, the Pinochet Constitution, and Judge Eugenio Valenzuela

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2021

Rehan Abeyratne
Affiliation:
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Iddo Porat
Affiliation:
College of Law and Business (Israel)
Get access

Summary

The depersonalization of the courts encouraged by the civil law tradition makes it less likely that judges in those types of jurisdiction will become towering or, at least, makes their influential jurisprudence anonymous or less visible. By exploring the experience of Eugenio Valenzuela, a Chilean judge who served on the Constitutional Court in the 1980s, 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 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 chapter claims that founding moments in fragile institutional settings of civil law countries may provide an opportunity for a political towering judge to emerge.

Type
Chapter
Information
Towering Judges
A Comparative Study of Constitutional Judges
, pp. 290 - 307
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×