The influence of preventive control in the legal system design of Chilean presidentialism

Abstract

This paper addresses the Chilean Constitutional Court in its regulatory context, so as to understand the meaning and scope of preventive control of constitutionality of laws in the normative design promoted by the Constitution of 1980. It appears that much of the current sense of TC is due to the critical diagnosis identified by the drafters of the Charter of 1980, not only for the first Constitutional Court, but, above all, the institutional system articulated in the Constitution of 1925. Hence it is argued that despite existing strong continuities regulations with the preceding Constitutional Court, the current version is characterized by granting it a different sense, determined largely by distrust expression of political majorities, especially fear of government overflow in the legislative function in the context of a presidential system of government.