ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between judicial behavior on the Chilean Constitutional Tribunal and the political background of its judges since the constitutional reforms of 2005. Chile's Constitutional Tribunal was created in 1980 under the authoritarian regime of Augusto Pinochet. Chile's judiciary under this regime was seen as complicit in human rights violations according to the Rettig Commission's Truth. The chapter first examines judge's positions on rulings and finds that some distinction has emerged among judges with different political backgrounds and between partisan members and nonpartisans. Second, it examines the judge's behavior in nonunanimous cases using a multidimensional scaling analysis and find that the pattern of dissent coalitions is consistent with general separation between the judges with center-left and right backgrounds. Finally, it examines several cases to illustrate the patterns on the Tribunal in this period. The chapter concludes some ideological differences on the Tribunal have emerged while a broadly 'political' pattern of judicial dissents has so far not occurred.
