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Javier Ignacio Valdés Torres

Javier Ignacio

PhD Student

Email: j.i.valdestorres@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

Thesis title

The State of Exception in Chile: A critical legal study of the process of normalization of the exception

Supervisors

Summary of Research

Javier Ignacio Valdés Torres is a PhD candidate in Law at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on the use of the state of exception in Chile, examining how this legal mechanism has been invoked and maintained over the past 50 years, from dictatorship to democracy. His project engages with legal theory, constitutional law, and political philosophy to explore how the state of exception has evolved from a temporary tool to a near-permanent feature of Chilean governance, particularly in response to crises such as migration, security terrorism, and climate disasters. This scenario has normalized the state of exception.

Javier’s work situates the Chilean experience within the global discourse on states of exception, drawing on the theories of thinkers like Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, and Walter Benjamin. His research seeks to critically address the erosion of democratic institutions and human rights under the normalized use of emergency powers, providing a situationally specific account of how these practices impact the legal order. Ultimately, his work seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of how states of exception operate in both democratic and authoritarian contexts and the challenges they pose to constitutional law in Latin America and beyond.

Biography

Javier is a PhD student funded by the HSS Principal’s Research Studentship and by Becas Chile – Beca de doctorado en el extranjero (ANID). He holds a Master’s in Public Law from the University of Chile, where he graduated summa cum laude (2023), and a Bachelor of Legal and Social Sciences from the same institution (first class, 2017). His Master’s thesis focused on the judicial review of states of exception in Chile, laying the foundation for his current research.

Before starting his PhD in 2023, Javier worked as Constitutional and Legal Advisor for the Chilean Government and the Constitutional Convention, helping to draft new constitutional and legal provisions on social development, indigenous and elders’ rights, territorial organization, and security. He is also an Instructor Professor at the University of Chile, where he has taught Moral Philosophy and Philosophy of Law. Javier has received several scholarships and awards allowing him to become the first person in his family with a higher education degree.

Javier loves science fiction books, a long range of music and cinema, anime and playing dungeons and dragons.

Publications

  • Valdés, J. & Pinto, F. (2022). El trabajo de cuidados y doméstico no remunerado: entre reconocimiento y redistribución. Revista de Derecho Público (96), 43-74: https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-5249.2022.67802
  • Valdés, J. & Miranda, D. (2022). Formularios básicos de las relaciones de los ciudadanos con la Administración del Estado, Tirant Lo Blanch, Valencia.
  • Valdés, J. (2021). Sobre reconocimiento y su aporte para la lectura de los derechos sociales como derechos de cooperación, in Ormeño, J. & Peña, I. (eds.), Reconocimiento y Derecho: Discusiones en torno al fundamento intersubjetivo de las instituciones jurídicas. Editorial Universitaria, Santiago, 133-152.
  • Valdés, J. & Lara Arroyo, José Luis (2020). “El Procedimiento Administrativo en Chile”, in Lara Arroyo, J.L & Magide Herrero, Mariano (dir), Procedimiento Administrativo y Contratación Pública en Iberoamérica, Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, 25-60.
  • Valdés, J. & Lara Arroyo, J.L. (2018). 40 años de la Constitución Española de 1978 y la Constitución Chilena de 1980: Encuentros y desencuentros del sistema de garantías de derechos fundamentales entre el caso chileno y el español, Revista Actualidad Jurídica Uría Menéndez, n.º 50, 27-37.

Presentations in Conferences

  • Critical Legal Conference: Speculation(s). Held at University of Lund, Lund, Sweden, 2024. Title: “The normalization of State of Exception: The case of Chile and the Mapuche conflict”.
  • PhD in Law Conference 2024. Held at Queen Mary University of London. Title: “The relationship between exception and dictatorship: Authoritarian law and the Chilean exception”.
  • VII Congress of Philosophy of Chile of 2021, in Symposium on Philosophy of Law. Title: "On the judicial review of the State of Exception".
  • V Congress of Philosophy of Chile of 2017, held in Valdivia, at the Symposium on Recognition and Law. Title: "On recognition and the search for a new meaning to the idea of rights".

Teaching Experience

  • Instructor Professor in Moral Philosophy (2023-Present), Universidad de Chile.
  • Assistant Professor in Logic of Norms (2020-2023), Universidad de Chile.
  • Invited Professor in Constitutional Law (2022), Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.
  • Teaching Assistant on Jurisprudence (2012-2022), Universidad de Chile; and Administrative Law (2018-2020), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Public Engagement

  • Coordinator of Database - Non-Human Rights Database Project – For Human Rights Law Centre and The British Academy (2024- to date).
  • Laboratory of Constituent Conflicts – University of Chile, January 2021 to December 2021.
  • Organizing Committee of the VI Student Congress of Constitutional Theory (2012 – 2013).
  • Organizing Committee of the V Cycle of Conferences on Political Philosophy at the Faculty of Law of the University of Chile (2012).

Research

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