Chile: Legal Response to Covid-19

Chile is a unitary, presidential, and highly centralized republic, with a codified constitution.1 The Chilean Constitution was originally enacted in 1980 during a military dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet. Constitutional amendment is a rigid process. Some chapters require a two-thirds majority vote in order to be amended, while all the remaining chapters require a three-fifths majority vote in the National Congress. The Constitution has been reformed numerous times since its enactment, particularly in 2005 when crucial democratic reforms were introduced. After unprecedented social unrest, in November 2019 an agreement was reached to initiate a process for drafting a new constitution. The first stage of the process was a referendum that took place on 25 October 2020 and resulted in vast majority support for drafting a new constitution by a constitutional convention (see Part III.D below).