SUPERIOR RESPONSIBILITY ACCORDING TO LAW 20.357

Abstract

The article offers a doctrinal reconstruction of the rule of superior responsibility, fixed in Art. 35 of the Chilean 20.357 Act, outlining its distinctive features against the corresponding regulation established in Art. 28 of the Rome Statute. After explaining how that rule may be placed in the general context of the intervention forms (in the sense of co-perpetration and accomplice liability) recognized by the Chilean Penal Code, that very intervention form is contrasted with the one defined in Art. 36 of the 20.357 Act, which corresponds to liability for issuing an order related to the perpetration of an offense. This leads to a comparison of that regulation with the relevant rules of the Military Justice Code. The article closes with an inquiry into the mens rea conditions that need to be satisfied for an ascription of responsibility to the superior for offenses punishable under the Act, grounded upon a failure to prevent their perpetration, in specific reference to the contextual element that integrates the definition of crimes against humanity.