Los principios fundamentales del sistema acusatorio

Abstract

Chile’s attempt to implement a legal system reform with accusatorial characteristics makes it necessary to examine whether they can actually be detected in the new adjective legal system. In comparing the principles that characterize an inquisitorial system with those of an accusatorial system, it is possible to observe, in the Chilean reform phenomenon, not only the weakened application of some principles which supposedly are basic to an accusatorial penal system, but also the lack of one which founded both the French revolutionary legal system and that of the other European Latin American legal systems from the XIX century on: the principle of lay judges’ participation.