Confronting State Repression in Two Moments: Courts, Dictatorship, and Transitional Justice in Chile, 1973 – 2010

The study accesses the working of lower courts through analysis of the records of judicial investigations -- under and after the Chilean military dictatorship (1973-1990) -- regarding acts related to repression. This paper argues that claims of judicial subservience to authoritarianism tend to draw on higher-court behavior; this research reveals that even while habeas corpus instruments were ineffective before disappearances and clandestine repression, lower courts pursued investigations that resulted in initial registers of events, witnesses, and leads. Along with the records of human rights organizations, these records are the starting point for contemporary cases of transitional justice. These forward and backward linkages between courts under dictatorship and courts in the present undermine any sharp break between judicial practices in the two periods and suggest the need for research on court activity under dictatorship. This study also has implications for understanding military strategies of impunity and their reversal in the present.