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Decolonising the understanding of constitutional developments in Chile: A conversation with Arnulf Becker Lorca

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Abstract

Since late 2020, Chile has been at the centre of a gripping theoretical debate over the form Latin American postcolonial constitutions should take, with implications for constitutionalism across the globe. This renewed interest in the transformative power of constitutions was spurred by a mass movement in a country marred by violence over inequality and rising costs of living in 2019. The social uprising demanded that a new document replace the neoliberal constitution put in place in 1980 by dictator Augusto Pinochet. However, the process of writing a fresh constitution has been protracted, with a much discussed first draft being defeated by a national plebiscite in September 2022. To understand the constitutional developments in Chile, we interviewed Chilean legal scholar Dr Arnulf Becker Lorca, Professor of Public International Law, European University Institute, Florence. Dr Becker Lorca was an adviser on the first draft. Here, he discusses the timeline of the drafting process and the reasons for which the first draft was thwarted, the intellectual history of the socio-economic rights being considered in Chilean constitutional debates, the myth of the pervasiveness of western constitutional ideas, and the role of international law in constitutionalism.

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Notes

  1. See for instance Gautam Bhatia, The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts (Harper Collins 2019); Kanad Bagchi, ‘Decriminalising Homosexuality in India as a Matter of Transformative Constitutionalism’ (Verfassungsblog, 09 September 2018). https://verfassungsblog.de/decriminalising-homosexuality-in-india-as-a-matter-of-transformative-constitutionalism/. Accessed 11 July 2023.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Marco Goldoni and Michael A Wilkinson, ‘The Material Constitution’ (2018) 81(4) Modern Law Review 567.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid. 568.

  6. Ibid. 569.

  7. Marco Goldoni and Michael A Wilkinson, The Cambridge Handbook on the Material Constitution (Cambridge University Press 2023).

  8. Michael Stott and Benedict Mander, ‘Chile president Sebastián Piñera: “We are ready to do everything to not fall into populism”’ (Financial Times, 17 October 2019). https://www.ft.com/content/980ec442-ee91-11e9-ad1e-4367d8281195. Accessed 11 July 2023.

  9. Jonathan Franklin, ‘Chile Protestors: “We Are Subjugated by the Rich. It’s Time for That to End’” (The Guardian, 30 October 2019). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/30/chile-protests-portraits-protesters-sebastian-pinera. Accessed 11 July 2023.

  10. Camila Vergara, ‘Chile Can Be a Laboratory of Popular Democracy’ (Jacobin, 23 November 2019). https://jacobin.com/2019/11/chile-protests-pinochet-constitution-neoliberalism. Accessed 11 July 2023.

  11. Jennifer M Piscopo and Peter M Siavelis, ‘Chile’s Constitutional Moment’ (2021) 120(823) Current History 43.

  12. Jennifer M Piscopo and Peter M Siavelis, ‘Chile’s Constitutional Chaos’ (2023) 34(1) Journal of Democracy 144.

  13. John Bartlett, ‘Vote on World’s Most Progressive Constitution Begins in Chile’ (The Guardian, 04 September 2022). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/04/constitution-approve-vote-chile. Accessed 26 March 2023; Pablo Abufom Silva, ‘Chile is on the Verge of a Historic Moment’ (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 30 August 2022). https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/46944/chile-is-on-the-verge-of-a-historic-moment. Accessed 26 March 2023; Jack Nicas, ‘Chile Votes on Constitution That Would Enshrine Record Number of Rights’ (The New York Times, 03 September 2022). https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/world/americas/chile-constitution-vote.html. Accessed 26 March 2023.

  14. Oliver Stuenkel, ‘Chile’s Rejection of the New Constitution is a Sign of Democratic Maturity’ (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 08 September 2022). https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/09/08/chile-s-rejection-of-new-constitution-is-sign-of-democratic-maturity-pub-87879. Accessed 26 March 2023; Patricio Navia, ‘Chile Now Has a Chance to Get New Constitution Right’ (Americas Quarterly, 06 September 2022). https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/chile-now-has-a-chance-to-get-new-constitution-right/. Accessed 26 March 2023; Michael Stott, ‘Chile’s Rejection of Populism is an Example for the World’ (Financial Times, 05 September 2022). https://www.ft.com/content/393de88b-c9f8-48cc-af33-d9fe86ee40d9. Accessed 26 March 2023; The Economist, ‘Chile’s New Draft Constitution Would Shift the Country Far to the Left’ (07 July 2022). https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2022/07/07/chiles-new-draft-constitution-would-shift-the-country-far-to-the-left. Accessed 26 March 2023; The Economist, ‘Voters Should Reject Chile’s New Draft Constitution’ (06 July 2022). https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/06/voters-should-reject-chiles-new-draft-constitution?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=18151738051&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-. Accessed 26 March 2023.

  15. Ibid. 151.

  16. Arnulf Becker Lorca, Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1842–1933 (Cambridge University Press 2014); Arnulf Becker Lorca, ‘Universal International Law: Nineteenth-Century Histories of Imposition and Appropriation’ (2010) 51(2) Harvard International Law Journal 475; Arnulf Becker Lorca, ‘International Law in Latin America or Latin American International Law? Rise, Fall, and Retrieval of a Tradition of Legal Thinking and Political Imagination’ (2006) 47(1) Harvard International Law Journal 283; Arnulf Becker Lorca, ‘Eurocentrism in the History of International Law’ in Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law (Oxford University Press 2012).

  17. Jack Goldsmith and Daryl Levinson, ‘Law for States: International Law, Constitutional Law, Public Law’ (2009) 122(7) Harvard Law Review 1791.

  18. Nico Krisch, Beyond Constitutionalism (Oxford University Press 2010) 3.

  19. See, among others, John Charney, Pablo Marshall, and Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘‘It Is Not 30 Pesos, It Is 30 Years’: Reflections on the Chilean Crisis: Introduction’ (2021) 30(4) Social & Legal Studies 627; Emilios Christodoulidis and Marco Goldoni, ‘Introduction: Chile’s ‘Constituent Moment’’ (2020) 31(1) Law and Critique 1; Fernando Atria, ‘Constituent Moment, Constituted Powers in Chile’ (2020) 31(1) Law and Critique 51.

  20. See for instance Tamar Hostovsky Brandes, ‘International Law in Domestic Courts in an Era of Populism’ (2019) 17(2) International Journal of Constitutional Law 576; Filiz Kahraman, Nikhil Kalyanpur, and Abraham L Newman, ‘Domestic Courts, Transnational Law, and International Order’ (2020) 26(S1) European Journal of International Relations 184; Raffaela Kunz, ‘Judging International Judgements Anew? The Human Rights Courts before Domestic Courts’ (2020) 30(4) European Journal of International Law 1129.

  21. Iván Jaksić, Andrés Bello: Scholarship and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: 87 (Cambridge University Press 2008).

  22. Andrés Bello, Principios de derecho de gentes (Librería de la señora Viuda de Calleja é Hijos 1844).

  23.  Marcelo G Kohen, ‘La contribution de l'Amérique latine au développement progressif du droit international en matière territoriale’ (2009) 137 Relations internationales 13.

  24. Marta Lorente, ‘Territorio y nacionalidad en Iberoamérica tras las independencias El principio constitucional uti possidetis juris: Razones y estrategias para contar su historia’ (2020) 55 Anuario de Historia de América Latina 60. See also Marta Lorente Sariñena, ‘Uti possidetis, ita domini eritis. International Law and the Historiography of the Territory’ in Massimo Meccarelli, María Julia Solla Sastre (eds), Spatial and Temporal Dimensions for Legal History (Max Planck Institute for European Legal History 2016).

  25. Guillermo Larrain, Gabriel Negretto, and Stefan Voigt, ‘How Not to Write a Constitution: Lessons from Chile’ (2023) 194 Public Choice 233.

  26. ‘Introduction’ in Tom Ginsburg and Sumit Bisarya (eds), Constitution Makers on Constitution Making (Cambridge University Press 2022).

  27. Arnulf Becker Lorca, ‘Human rights in international law? The forgotten origins of human rights in Latin America’ (2017) 67(4) University of Toronto Law Journal 465.

  28. ‘Human Rights in Transformative Constitutionalism’ (Harvard Law School). https://hls.harvard.edu/courses/human-rights-in-transformative-constitutionalism/. Accessed 26 March 2023.

  29. Jennifer M Piscopo and Peter M Siavelis, ‘Chile’s Constitutional Moment’ (2021) 120(823) Current History 43.

  30. Camila Vergara, ‘Chile’s Rejection’ (Sidecar, 09 September 2022). https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/chiles-rejection. Accessed 11 July 2023.

  31. Rodrigo Kaufmann, ‘Chile or the Impossibility of a Constitution’ (Verfassungsblog, 09 May 2023). https://verfassungsblog.de/chile-or-the-impossibility-of-a-constitution/. Accessed 11 July 2023.

  32. See Roberto Gargarella, The Law as a Conversation Among Equals (Cambridge University Press 2022) 111.

  33. The Rights of Nature movement seeks to gain recognition for natural entities (like rivers and mountains, amongst others) and animals as objects of legal rights on par with humans. See, generally, Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. https://www.garn.org/. Accessed 6 November 2022; Community Environment Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). https://celdf.org/rights-of-nature/. Accessed 26 March 2023.

  34. Roberto Gargarella, ‘Rejection of the New Chilean Constitution: Some Reflections’ (Oxford Human Rights Hub, 14 September 2022). https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/rejection-of-the-new-chilean-constitution-some-reflections/. Accessed 26 March 2023.

  35. Roberto Gargarella, ‘The “New” Latin American Constitutionalism: Old Wine in New Skins’ in Armin von Bogdandy et al (eds), Transformative Constitutionalism in Latin America: The Emergence of a New Ius Commune (Oxford University Press 2017).

  36. Duncan Kennedy, ‘Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication’ (1976) 88 Harvard Law Review 1685; Duncan Kennedy, ‘Two Globalization of Law & (and) Legal Thought: 1850-1968’ (2003) 36(3) Suffolk University Law Review 631.

  37. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (Cambridge University Press 1988).

  38. Robert Hearne and Guillermo Donoso, ‘Water Markets in Chile: Are They Meeting Needs?’ in K William Easter and Quiqiong Huang (eds), Water Markets for the 21st Century. Global Issues in Water Policy (Springer 2014).

  39. Michael Stott, ‘Chile’s Rejection of Populism is an Example for the World’ (Financial Times, 05 September 2022). https://www.ft.com/content/393de88b-c9f8-48cc-af33-d9fe86ee40d9. Accessed 26 March 2023; The Economist, ‘Chile’s New Draft Constitution Would Shift the Country Far to the Left’ (07 July 2022). https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2022/07/07/chiles-new-draft-constitution-would-shift-the-country-far-to-the-left. Accessed 26 March 2023; The Economist, ‘Voters Should Reject Chile’s New Draft Constitution’ (06 July 2022). https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/06/voters-should-reject-chiles-new-draft-constitution?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=18151738051&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-. Accessed 26 March 2023.

  40. Joseph L Nogee and John W Sloan, ‘Allende’s Chile and the Soviet Union: A Policy Lesson for Latin American Nations Seeking Autonomy’ (2018) 21(3) Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 339.

  41. Fernando Atría Lemaître et al., El otro modelo: del orden neoliberal al régimen de lo público (Debate 2013).

  42. Juan Pablo Luna, La chusma inconsciente: La crisis de un país atendido por sus propios dueños (Editorial Catalonia 2021).

  43. José Antonio Aguilar Rivera, En pos de la quimera: Reflexiones sobre el experimento constitucional atlántico (Fondo de Cultura Económica 2000).

  44. See Hanna Lerner, Making Constitutions in Deeply Divided Societies (Cambridge University Press 2011) 39.

  45. For a definition of this term see Hélène Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press 2020) 25.

  46. Laurent Pech and R Daniel Kelemen, ‘If You Think the US is Having a Constitutional Crisis, You Should See What is Happening in Poland’ (The Washington Post, 25 January 2020). https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/25/if-you-think-us-is-having-constitutional-crisis-you-should-see-what-is-happening-poland/. Accessed 26 March 2023.

  47. Gábor Halmai, ‘The Blame for Defeat and the Morality of Politics’ (Verfassungsblog, 07 April 2022). https://verfassungsblog.de/the-blame-for-defeat-and-the-morality-of-politics/. Accessed 26 March 2023.

  48. The Economist, ‘The Organs of India’s Democracy are Decaying’ (12 February 2022). https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/02/12/the-organs-of-indias-democracy-are-decaying?gclid=Cj0KCQjwt_qgBhDFARIsABcDjOc_XAFTD1_eM_KxOb_wgvUKqTeYAPbQqVdOV4baCQ62_HwJ2uo8MPIaAlNoEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds. Accessed 26 March 2023.

  49. See Adam Sulikowski, Postliberal Constitutionalism: The Challenge of Right Wing Populism in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge 2023).

  50. Armin von Bogdandy et al. (eds), Transformative Constitutionalism in Latin America: The Emergence of a New Ius Commune (Oxford University Press 2017) 4.

  51. The term transformative constitutionalism was coined by Karl Klare, to describe not only the promises but also the challenges of a ‘long-term project of constitutional enactment, interpretation, and enforcement committed… to transforming a country’s political and social institutions and power relationships in a democratic, participatory, and egalitarian direction’. Karl E Klare, ‘Legal Culture and Transformative Constitutionalism’ (1998) 14(1) South African Journal on Human Rights 146.

  52. A Rodiles, ‘The Great Promise of Comparative Public Law for Latin America: Towards Ius Commune Americanum?’, in A Roberts et al. (eds), Comparative International Law (Oxford University Press 2018) 509.

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  1. Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

    Ankita Gandhi

  2. University of York, York, UK

    Shivangi Gangwar

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Gandhi, A., Gangwar, S. Decolonising the understanding of constitutional developments in Chile: A conversation with Arnulf Becker Lorca. Jindal Global Law Review 14, 165–185 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41020-023-00201-3

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