“Recurso de Protección” between exigencies of urgency and legal certainty

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Chilean historical and political context that explains the origins of the so called “Recurso de protección”. That context was the Popular Unity government (1970- 1973). Now, when that political crisis has been overcome, the author proposes a reformulation of the urgent protection of constitutional rights in order to make it more effective, more respectful of due process of law and more certain. He advocates changes to regulations and interpretations of the system of judicial protection of fundamental rights, by better articulating the constitutional proceedings with private and administrative ones. In order to unify the ratio decidendi of judicial decisions on constitutional rights, he suggests the creation of a cassation procedure before the Constitutional Court.