Ideological Voting on Chile's Constitutional Tribunal: Dissent Coalitions in the Adjudication of Rights

Abstract

In this article, we examine the relationship between judicial behavior on the Chilean Constitutional Tribunal and the political background of its judges since the constitutional reforms of 2005. We first examine judges’ positions on rulings and find that some distinction has emerged among judges with different political backgrounds and between partisan members and nonpartisans. Notably, these distinctions vary across subject matter and case type. Second, we examine the judges’ behavior in nonunanimous cases using a multidimensional scaling analysis and find that the pattern of dissent coalitions is consistent with a general separation between the judges with center-left and right backgrounds. Finally, we examine several cases to illustrate the patterns on the Tribunal in this period. We conclude that some ideological differences on the Tribunal have emerged while a broadly “political” pattern of judicial dissents has so far not occurred.