Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the contours of procedural deviationas a jurisprudential doctrine applied in the Chilean environmental judicial reviewsystem, understood as the modification in court of the claims, grounds or defects ofillegality raised before, while pursuing administrative remedies. This doctrine places aburden for citizens, who must assert all the defects of the agency’s decision when filingfor administrative remedies. To this end, is required to state the importance of its ac curate use in environmental matters, regarding the role of the exhaustion of administrativeremedies doctrine in complex and highly discretionary issues. This is vital due tothe implications that its configuration produces in access to environmental jurisdiction,since once the procedural deviation is verified, a Court must dismiss the case, totally orpartially, for want of jurisdiction. For this reason, after an analysis of the state-of-the-artin the national and comparative caselaw and jurisprudence about the procedural deviationdoctrine, and to give reasons about the convenience to keep it within a judicialreview system, some cases are proposed in which this doctrine does not apply in thepresence of modified arguments, for which a Court must analyze the merits of the case.