The current Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile, approved by Chilean voters in a tightly controlled plebiscite on September 11, 1980, under Augusto Pinochet, and made effective on March 11, 1981, has been amended in 1989, 1991, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005.
The sea, rivers and lakes, mines and natural reservations belong to the state and may be used by "anyone", but when individual exploitation is possible then it is in the hands of privates.
Public entities act through administrative procedures, that is, processes with formal stages where opportunities to deliver evidence and exercise appeals are granted to the citizens.
However, civil courts have jurisdiction over all matters that are not in the scope of other tribunal, such as public liability and the overturn of single administrative acts.
Since the privatization of most economic activities in the 1980s, the President and the independent agencies became the main policy makers regarding the regulation of the economy, subordinated to legislation.
There are agencies (Superintendencias) dealing with: The Civil Code of the Republic of Chile is the work of the Chilean-Venezuelan jurist and legislator Andrés Bello.
Their principles was: high protection of matrimonial family (and discrimination ni non-matrimonial filiation), authority of husband over wife, and a great parental power over the children.
However, there were several reforms across the 20th century, for the purpose of ending legal discrimination and make family relationships more equal, in addition to protecting the most vulnerable members.
Likewise, Civil Code was reformated many times for doing better conditions for married women, and in 1989 the husband authority was repealed; on the other hand, in 1998 it introduces a new filiative system that gives equal rights to children born inside or outside a marriage.
While the prosecution is in charge of an autonomous authority (Ministerio Público), the actual judgement is made by a collegiate court (Tribunal de Juicio Oral en lo Penal).
The Chilean Criminal Code, which defines the conducts that constitute an offense and the applicable conviction, dates back to 1874.