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Chilean Constitution of 1980

Current constitution of Chile From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile of 1980 (Spanish: Constitución Política de la República de Chile) is the fundamental law currently in force in Chile. It was drafted under the military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet, approved in a disputed plebiscite on September 11, 1980, and formally promulgated on October 21, 1980, with an original text of 120 articles and 29 transitory provisions.[1][2] The constitution took effect under a transitional regime on March 11, 1981, and entered into full force on March 11, 1990, with the return to electoral democracy.

Since 1990, the constitution has been amended repeatedly — by one count, close to 70 times through 52 separate reform laws, altering a cumulative 257 articles as of 2023.[3][4] The most far-reaching of these reforms, enacted in 2005 under President Ricardo Lagos, removed several provisions associated with the dictatorship, including appointed and lifetime senators and the armed forces' constitutional role as guarantor of the political order.[5] As of early 2026, the amended text comprises 161 articles organized into fifteen chapters, together with 54 transitory provisions.[6]

Following the 2019–2021 Chilean protests, Chile undertook two consecutive attempts to replace the 1980 constitution altogether. A Constitutional Convention, elected in 2021, produced a draft that voters rejected in a September 2022 referendum. A second process, combining an appointed Expert Commission and an elected Constitutional Council, produced a further draft that voters rejected in a December 2023 referendum. With no additional referendum planned, the 1980 constitution, as amended, remains in force.

The constitution's origins continue to be debated. Its drafters were appointed exclusively by the military government, opponents of the regime were excluded from the drafting process, and the 1980 ratifying plebiscite was conducted without an electoral register and under restrictions on political campaigning, leading many scholars and political actors to question its democratic legitimacy notwithstanding the numerous amendments made since 1990.[7]

Background

Main article: Ortúzar Commission

The Commission for the Study of the New Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile, commonly known as the Ortúzar Commission, was established in 1973 by the Government Junta that took power after the coup against President Salvador Allende. Chaired by Enrique Ortúzar Escobar, a former Minister of Justice and Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Jorge Alessandri, the commission met from September 24, 1973, to October 5, 1978, with a mandate to draft a preliminary constitutional text.[8] A declassified document dated September 13, 1973 — two days after the coup — indicates that commission member Jaime Guzmán had already been assigned by the Junta to study the drafting of a new constitution.[9]

Members of the commission included Rafael Eyzaguirre Echeverría (secretary), Sergio Diez Urzúa, Enrique Evans de la Cuadra, Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz, Gustavo Lorca Rojas, Jorge Ovalle Quiroz, Alejandro Silva Bascuñán, Alicia Romo Román, and Raúl Gormaz Molina, later joined by Luz Bulnes Aldunate, Raúl Bertelsen Repetto, and Juan de Dios Carmona.[10][11]

Contrary to a common perception, the Ortúzar Commission was not a constituent assembly and did not itself draft the 1980 Constitution. It produced a preliminary draft that was subsequently reviewed by the Council of State — chaired by former president Jorge Alessandri, with Ortúzar's participation — which introduced further changes between 1978 and 1980. The Government Junta then made additional modifications before submitting the final text to the 1980 plebiscite.[12] Even so, much of the eventual constitutional text originated in debates conducted within the commission, though many of its specific proposals were altered or discarded at later stages.[13]

Adoption and entry into force (1980–1990)

In an address on August 10, 1980, Pinochet called on Chileans over the age of 18 to approve the proposed text in the coming plebiscite, describing it as grounded in personal liberty, private ownership of the means of production, and free economic initiative within a subsidiary state, and presenting the vote as the next step in the process begun by the 1973 coup.[14] The text was submitted to voters in the 1980 Chilean constitutional referendum and reported approved, with roughly 69 percent voting in favor.[15] The plebiscite was criticized for significant irregularities: no electoral register existed, since the previous rolls had been destroyed after the coup, and opposition groups faced substantial restrictions on public campaigning, with limited or no access to television and radio.[16] Reporting at the time and later research documented hundreds of allegations of fraud, including systematic double voting by intelligence agents, though the government's official result was never overturned.[17][18] The constitution took effect on March 11, 1981, though its validity was not recognized by some sectors of Chilean society.

Under the transitory provisions set by the new constitution, the Government Junta held legislative and constituent powers between 1981 and 1990 — the latter subject to ratification by plebiscite — while Pinochet held the presidency and the courts continued to operate as they had since the start of the dictatorship. In 1988, the constitution's mechanism for the succession of the presidency was triggered through a plebiscite in which a majority of voters rejected an additional eight-year term for Pinochet, leading to presidential and congressional elections the following year.[19]

Ahead of the 1989 parliamentary elections, the Concertación and right-wing parties negotiated a package of 54 constitutional reforms, approved in a plebiscite on July 30, 1989.[20] Among the most consequential changes, the reform eliminated Article 8, which had proscribed political parties or movements deemed "totalitarian" or based on class struggle; removed the president's power to exile citizens; preserved access to habeas corpus and other protective remedies during states of emergency; ended the requirement that party membership rolls be public; eased incompatibilities between union leadership and party membership; balanced military and civilian representation on the National Security Council; eliminated the president's power to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies; and lowered the quorum for organic constitutional laws from three-fifths to four-sevenths, while raising the quorum for amending certain chapters from three-fifths to two-thirds.[21] Together with the Concertación's victory in the 1989 presidential election, which brought Patricio Aylwin to office in 1990, this reform package led most political and social sectors — with the notable exception of the Communist Party of Chile and other extra-parliamentary left-wing groups — to accept the constitution as a working framework, even as calls for its eventual replacement continued.

Structure and content

As amended, the 1980 Constitution is organized into fifteen chapters:[22]

  1. Bases of Institutionality (arts. 1–9): sets out foundational principles, including national sovereignty, representative democracy, the unitary form of the state, a tendency toward administrative decentralization, and the principles of legality and state responsibility.
  2. Nationality and Citizenship (arts. 10–18): governs the acquisition of Chilean nationality by descent, birth in Chile, naturalization, or grant by law; grounds for loss of nationality; the right to appeal an arbitrary denial of nationality to the Supreme Court; and the rules of citizenship and suffrage.
  3. Constitutional Rights and Duties (arts. 19–23): the constitution's bill of rights, including the right to life, equality before the law, freedom of conscience and expression, freedom of association, and the right to property, together with a guarantee that legislation may not affect the essential content of these rights. This chapter also establishes the recurso de protección, a judicial remedy for the enforcement of certain constitutional guarantees against arbitrary or unlawful acts.
  4. Government (arts. 24–45): establishes the President of the Republic as head of state and government, the method of presidential election, presidential powers, rules governing cabinet ministers, the basic framework for state administration, and states of constitutional exception.
  5. National Congress (arts. 46–75): establishes a bicameral Congress composed of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, with rules on their composition, member qualifications, respective and joint powers, procedure, and lawmaking.
  6. Judicial Power (arts. 73–80): establishes the courts subordinate to the Supreme Court, with jurisdiction over judicial matters within Chilean territory.
  7. Public Prosecutor's Office (arts. 83–91): establishes the Ministerio Público, its organization, the appointment of its members, and its powers.
  8. Constitutional Court (arts. 92–94): establishes the Constitutional Court of Chile, the method of appointing its members, its powers, and the binding force of its rulings.
  9. Electoral Service and Electoral Justice (arts. 94 bis–97): sets out the basic framework of the Electoral Service and electoral justice.
  10. Office of the Comptroller General (arts. 98–100): establishes the autonomous Comptroller General's office and the appointment of its members.
  11. Armed Forces, Order, and Public Security (arts. 101–105): governs the armed forces and police, promotions, and the appointment of the commanders-in-chief.
  12. National Security Council (arts. 106–107): establishes an advisory body to the president on matters within its competence.
  13. Central Bank (arts. 108–109): sets out the basic framework for the autonomous, technical Central Bank of Chile.
  14. Government and Internal Administration of the State (arts. 110–126 bis): governs regional, provincial, and municipal government and administration, recognizing Easter Island and the Juan Fernández Islands as special territories.
  15. Amendment of the Constitution and Procedure for Drafting a New Constitution (arts. 127–161): sets the procedures and quorums for amending the constitution. Amendment bills may be initiated by presidential message or by a member of Congress and generally require approval by four-sevenths of sitting deputies and senators in each chamber. Although the constitution as originally adopted contained no mechanism for its wholesale replacement, this chapter was reformed in late 2019 to create such a procedure (arts. 130–143) and again in early 2023 to establish a second procedure (arts. 144–161), following the 2022 referendum's rejection of the first draft.[22]

Amendments under democratic governments (1990–2018)

1990–1999

Under President Patricio Aylwin, reforms in 1991 modified provisions on terrorist conduct and on regional and municipal government and administration.[23][24] Under President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, the original eight-year presidential term was shortened to six years in 1994,[25] and a series of reforms in 1997 created the Public Prosecutor's Office as part of criminal-procedure reform and altered the composition of the Supreme Court and other judicial appointments.[26][27] Reforms in 1999 replaced gendered language in the constitution's text (substituting "los hombres" with "las personas") to reinforce the principle of equality before the law between men and women,[28] established a state duty to promote early-childhood education,[29] and modified rules on presidential runoff elections.[30] Under President Ricardo Lagos, a 2003 reform made secondary education compulsory and free through age 21.[31]

2005 comprehensive reform

Throughout the 1990s, figures across the political spectrum continued to question the constitution's legitimacy, though comprehensive reform proved politically difficult while the center-right opposition retained blocking power in Congress. A broad consensus to eliminate the remaining provisions inherited from the dictatorship — often described as "authoritarian enclaves" — was reached only during Lagos's presidency. After extended negotiation, the Senate reached a reform agreement on July 14, 2005; following a further accord between the government and Congress, the president introduced a partial veto affecting 27 articles, which both chambers quickly approved. On August 16, 2005, the National Congress of Chile, sitting in joint session, ratified the reform package by a vote of 150 in favor, three against, and one abstention.[32]

On September 17, 2005, President Lagos signed a decree fixing a consolidated, coordinated, and systematized text of the constitution incorporating the reforms — the first time a president other than Pinochet had signed the constitutional text.[33] Comprising 58 individual changes, the reform is generally regarded as the most significant since the constitution's adoption.[34] Following the reform, the consolidated text signed by Lagos contained 129 articles and 20 transitory provisions.[35] Its principal elements included:

  • Elimination of designated and lifetime senators: until 2006, the Senate of Chile comprised 38 popularly elected senators, plus nine appointed senators (drawn from former heads of the armed forces branches and Carabineros de Chile, among other institutions) and "senators for life," a status held by former presidents — occupied by Pinochet from 1998 to 2001, and by Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle from 2000 to 2006.
  • A shorter, non-renewable presidential term: terms beginning in March 2006 were reduced from six to four years, and the minimum age to hold the presidency was lowered from 40 to 35.
  • New rights and duties, including a constitutional duty of probity for public officials, express recognition of personal and family honor as a right, strengthened due-process guarantees, and a narrowing of the effect of states of emergency on individual rights.
  • Changes to the Comptroller General's office and the Constitutional Court, altering their composition, method of appointment, and functions.
  • Presidential power to remove the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces and the director general of Carabineros, subject only to notifying Congress, replacing a prior requirement of a majority vote of the National Security Council.
  • A revised National Security Council, made purely advisory to the president and convocable only by the president, rather than by any of its members.
  • Simplified rules on nationality, eliminating the one-year residency requirement for children of Chileans born abroad to acquire nationality by descent, while providing for loss of citizenship upon conviction for drug trafficking.
  • Strengthened decentralization, including removal of the constitution's explicit reference to thirteen regions, later allowing the creation of the Los Ríos Region and Arica y Parinacota Region.[34]

2006–2018

Under President Michelle Bachelet's first term, reforms established a state obligation to help finance early education,[36] created the special territories of Easter Island and the Juan Fernández archipelago,[37] and, in 2009, established suffrage as a right accompanied by automatic voter registration.[38] Under President Sebastián Piñera's first term, a 2011 reform obligated the state to provide legal assistance to crime victims,[39] and a 2014 reform removed the constitution's fixed figure of 120 deputies, opening the way for reform of the binomial electoral system.[40] Under Bachelet's second term, a 2017 reform replaced appointed regional intendants with popularly elected regional governors,[41] and, under Piñera's second term, a 2018 reform enshrined a constitutional right to personal data protection.[42]

Some political scientists have argued that the electoral rules originally set by the 1980 Constitution tended to favor the election of right-wing legislative majorities relative to the parties' respective vote shares; several rounds of amendments since 1989, including the end of the binomial system, have been enacted partly to address this concern, though assessments of their effect vary.[43][44]

Attempts to replace the constitution

First attempt (2015–2018)

On April 28, 2015, President Michelle Bachelet announced that a constituent process would begin that September to draft, discuss, and potentially approve a new constitution to replace the 1980 text.[45] In a nationally broadcast address on October 13, 2015, Bachelet proposed that Congress let its successor choose among four possible mechanisms for discussing and approving a new charter — a joint congressional commission, a mixed convention of legislators and citizens, an elected constituent assembly, or a plebiscite letting citizens decide among those options — by a three-fifths majority.[46] The announced process proceeded through civic education, citizen dialogues, and the drafting of citizen-sourced "bases" for a new constitution, with a reform bill establishing the replacement mechanism expected to follow.[47] On March 6, 2018, five days before leaving office, Bachelet formally submitted a constitutional reform bill to Congress,[48] but Congress did not carry the process forward, and Bachelet later acknowledged that the effort had not been "fully completed."[49]

Second attempt (2019–2022)

Demands for a new constitution resurfaced with force during the October 2019 protests, voiced among others by social leaders and a spokesperson for the Supreme Court; some commentators linked the state's constitutionally enshrined subsidiary economic role to the grievances behind the unrest, though this view was contested by others who defended the existing framework.[50] President Sebastián Piñera, facing pressure that included members of his own coalition, signaled openness to structural reform without initially committing to specifics.[51]

On November 15, 2019, ruling-party and opposition lawmakers reached a political agreement — the "Agreement for Social Peace and the New Constitution" — to reform Chapter XV and open a constituent process, beginning with an entry plebiscite asking voters both whether they wanted a new constitution and what kind of body should draft it.[52][53] The resulting reform, Law 21,200 of December 24, 2019, scheduled the entry plebiscite for April 26, 2020 — later postponed to October because of the COVID-19 pandemic — with two questions: whether voters wanted a new constitution, and whether it should be drafted by a "Mixed Constitutional Convention," split evenly between elected citizens and sitting members of Congress, or a "Constitutional Convention" composed entirely of citizens elected for that purpose. The law also set a nine-month drafting period, extendable by three months; a two-thirds approval quorum within the convention; and a mandatory, binding exit plebiscite to ratify or reject the resulting text, with rejection leaving the 1980 Constitution in force.[54]

Voters approved drafting a new constitution in the October 25, 2020, plebiscite, along with the fully elected convention option. Additional reforms adjusted the process amid the pandemic and to broaden representation, including measures permitting Congress to sit by telematic means,[55] guaranteeing gender parity among convention candidates,[56] reserving seats for Indigenous representatives,[57] and easing registration requirements for independent candidates.[58] The members of the Constitutional Convention were elected in May 2021,[59] first convened on July 4, 2021,[60] and spent roughly a year drafting a new text.[52]

The resulting proposal was submitted to the mandatory exit plebiscite on September 4, 2022, where it had the backing of left-leaning President Gabriel Boric but was rejected by voters by a margin of 62 percent to 38 percent.[61][62][63] Critics of the draft argued that it was excessively long and reflected a markedly left-leaning and, in their view, radical set of proposals, characterizations that supporters of the text disputed.[64][65]

Third attempt (2022–2023)

The day after the September 2022 referendum, President Boric met with the presidents of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies to discuss a new institutional path forward, and further multiparty talks continued in the following weeks.[66][67] On December 12, 2022, party leaders agreed to a new procedure combining a popularly elected, 50-member council with an appointed expert commission.[68]

On January 17, 2023, Law 21,533 was published, again reforming Chapter XV to establish this procedure.[69] The law required the new draft to respect twelve fixed constitutional principles, including that Chile remain a democratic, unitary, and decentralized republic under a social and democratic rule of law; that it recognize Indigenous peoples as part of the nation; that it preserve the separation of powers and constitutionally autonomous bodies such as the Central Bank and the Comptroller General; and that it guarantee core rights such as the right to life, equality before the law, and property rights. It established a 24-member Expert Commission, appointed in equal parts by the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, to draft a preliminary text; a 14-member Technical Committee of Admissibility to arbitrate compliance with the drafting rules; and a 50-member Constitutional Council, elected by popular vote under Senate electoral rules and including reserved seats for Indigenous peoples, to revise and approve the text by a three-fifths majority before submitting it to a mandatory ratifying plebiscite.[70]

On March 6, 2023, the Expert Commission — chaired by lawyer Verónica Undurraga — began a three-month drafting period based on the twelve agreed institutional bases. The draft then passed to the Constitutional Council, whose 50 members were elected on May 7, 2023.[71] On December 17, 2023, voters rejected the resulting proposal, which was widely characterized as more conservative-leaning than the constitution it would have replaced, by a margin of 55.8 percent to 44.2 percent.[72] President Boric stated he would not pursue a third referendum, an outcome that left the amended 1980 charter in force for the foreseeable future.[73] Some observers have suggested that the back-to-back rejection of both a left-leaning and a right-leaning replacement text allowed proponents of the existing constitution to argue that its continued force had been effectively reaffirmed by voters, though this interpretation has also been contested by those who view the outcomes primarily as rejections of the specific drafts on offer rather than an endorsement of the 1980 text.[74][75]

Subsequent amendments (2022–2025)

Following the end of the second constituent process, Congress enacted further amendments outside the replacement procedure. In August 2022, the quorum required to amend the constitution was lowered from two-thirds to four-sevenths of sitting members of Congress, and the quorum for a partial presidential veto of a reform bill was likewise lowered to four-sevenths.[76] A January 2023 law restored compulsory voting in Chilean elections, excluding voting from abroad.[77] In October 2025, a further amendment (Law 21,773) tightened residency requirements for foreign nationals to vote in Chilean elections, raising the requirement from five years of temporary residency to ten uninterrupted years of permanent residency, effective from 2026 onward; the reform left it to ordinary legislation to determine whether compulsory-voting penalties would apply to newly enfranchised foreign residents as they do to Chilean citizens.[78][79]

Legitimacy and criticism

Scholars have identified two principal sources of the constitution's ongoing legitimacy problem. According to law professor Camel Cazor Aliste, the drafting body was not representative of Chile's political spectrum, since its members were selected by the Pinochet dictatorship and opponents of the regime were deliberately excluded; and the constitution's approval rested on a 1980 referendum that was itself conducted under tightly controlled and, according to Cazor Aliste, illegitimate conditions.[80] As described above, the 1980 campaign period was markedly asymmetric — government-aligned messaging had access to radio and television, while opposition campaigning was largely confined to small public gatherings — and no electoral roll existed for the vote, since prior registers had been destroyed after the coup; later investigations identified thousands of instances of double voting by intelligence-service personnel.[81]

Despite the constitution having been amended nearly 70 times since 1990,[82][83] critics have argued that these amendments have not fully resolved the underlying question of its origins, a concern that helped drive the push for wholesale replacement described above. Supporters of the current text, by contrast, have pointed to the extent and breadth of the amendments — spanning every major area of the charter across governments of differing political orientations — as evidence that the document now reflects a broad, cross-partisan democratic consensus rather than its authoritarian origins alone. The 2020, 2022, and 2023 referendums on replacing the constitution are discussed in the section above.

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