8 - Institutionalizing Neighborhood Courts: Two Chilean Experiences

Abstract

This chapter discusses institutionalizing neighborhood courts and two Chilean experiences. Two general concerns animate interest in decentralizing urban courts or establishing neighborhood courts. Courts of modern urban commercial-industrial centers have highly specialized procedures necessitating professional advocates and caseloads dominated by disputes involving substantial material stakes or breaches of public order. These characteristics bar easy access to judicial services for those whose resources are modest or whose disputes are of lesser moment. Deprofessional ization, simplification, and decentralization can be seen as a possible means of removing these barriers, though analyses of small claims courts suggest some limitations. Decentralized courts can also be seen as efforts to replace urban anomic social relations with a greater sense of community and establish local level governance. They might permit peaceful face-to-face resolution of disputes and discourage damaging, anonymous retribution or lingering irresolution. Such courts might influence or be influenced by community norms and residents. For a period of time in 1971, neighborhood courts became a Chilean political issue capturing national attention. The recently elected Allende Unidad Popular (UP) coalition government proposed a law to establish a nationwide system of elected, neighborhood, lay courts. The bill met such vociferous criticism in the opposition-controlled Congress that it was withdrawn. In political terms, the bill can be seen as a part of a UP effort to gain the allegiance of thousands of uncommitted poor and working-class voters living in the many new (and not so new) squatter settlements surrounding Santiago. It was also an ideological attack on the existing judicial structure, which the UP regarded as biased against the working class.