Experience of establishing environmental courts in Chile

Abstract

The article reviews the experience of the Republic of Chile in the specialized environmental courts implementation. The interest in this topic regarding the system of environmental courts formation in Chile for national science is due to the relatively insignificant amount of research about the phenomenon of environmental law, examples in foreign countries and small coverage of the legal system of Chile, which is one of the most developed Latin American countries.

Environmental courts were implemented only in 2012, and Chilean jurisprudence continues to debate their place in the country's judicial system. The creation of independent environmental courts in this country is linked with the lack of a unified system of administrative and commercial courts and according to the general trend towards building highly specialized courts. In the course of the reform, three environmental courts were created and jurisdiction of each has to cover a certain segment of the state. Each court consists of five members, three of whom must be lawyers and the other two must be professionals in environmental protection. The President with the consent of the Senate appoints all members of the environmental courts. The Supreme Court of Chile, which is the highest court in appealing against decisions on the merits, preforms a crucial role for environmental courts. Instead, the decisions of these courts on procedural issues are appealed to the relevant appellate courts according to the location of each environmental court. Thus, the environmental courts in Chile are similar to ordinary courts of first instance, while showing a separate status.

Environmental courts activity has benefits that are explicit in profound specialization of judges, their involvement in the most environmentally friendly solution development, which is based not only on legal rules, but also on technical regulations. Among the drawbacks of this system is the high centralization of judicial institutions, a relatively small number of judges and limited opportunities to appeal the court decisions. Based on the results of the study, a conclusion was made about the inexpediency of introducing such system in Ukraine, however further procedure improvement in resolving disputes in the field of environmental protection is necessary.