Tres advertencias: Tribunal Constitucional y el derecho adjetivo

Abstract

: One of the ways in which democracies check and channel institutional power is by establishing highly detailed procedures through which these institutions can act. That is what can be read, for example, in article 7 of the Chilean constitutional text, when it states that organs of the state act validly only when they have been legally invested in their powers and —most importantly for the purposes of this work— within the confines of their competences and in the form established in the laws. Has the Constitutional Court honored such basic principle of constitutionalism? This work argues that during the last two years the Court has entertained in a series of practices that have taken it to deceit the adjective rules governing its powers. This has occurred when it has unbound itself from the rules governing its powers. Infringing such rules as those governing competences and procedures is worrisome in its own merit, but particularly when we are assessing the exercise of power by an institution whose democratic credentials are, when compared with those of the other branches, weaker.