Balancing or Delimiting Fundamental Rights?An Analysis of the Instituto Alemán de Osorno Case in Light of the Alexy–García Amado Debate

Abstract

This article critically examines the use of fundamental rights balancing in Chilean judicial practice through a single, methodologically controlled case study. Drawing on the theoretical framework developed by Robert Alexy—according to which the balancing of principles constitutes a structured and rational exercise articulated through the principle of proportionality and the so-called “weight formula”—and contrasting it with the skeptical critique advanced by Juan Antonio García Amado, who questions the descriptive and justificatory capacity of balancing, the article offers an in-depth analysis of the Chilean Supreme Court’s decision in the Instituto Alemán de Osorno v. Superintendencia de Educación case (Decision N°6.192-2025).

Through a dual reconstruction of the Court’s reasoning, the study shows that the decision is not structured as a balancing exercise in the technical sense proposed by Alexy. Instead, the case is more convincingly explained as an operation of delimiting the normative content of the right to equality and non-arbitrary discrimination, followed by subsumption. Within this delimited context, the case provides a particularly illustrative example of the gap that may exist between the language of balancing and the effective techniques of judicial reasoning, while also highlighting the relevance of conceptual delimitation of fundamental rights as an autonomous decision-making technique.