Legal transplant of Anglo-American whistleblowing to Chile

Abstract

This Thesis examines the challenges and limits of the legal transplant of Anglo-American whistleblowing protections, particularly anti-retaliation, into the Chilean legal system. It argues that whistleblowing, as a legal category, is an original innovation of Anglo-American law that lacks a true functional equivalent in civil law jurisdictions, such Chile. Drawing on comparative analysis, the research demonstrates that whistleblowing protection in the United States is embedded in its employment discrimination framework and supported by procedural mechanisms, such as discovery and public interest conflicts in the workplace, that are absent in Chile.

Through a combination of doctrinal analysis and comparative methodology, the Thesis first defines the concept of whistleblowing and traces its historical and linguistic origins in English law. It then assesses the Chilean legal framework’s capacity to receive and replicate Anglo-American whistleblowing rules, identifying significant mismatches in both substance and procedure. The study shows that Chile’s constitutional and statutory system of employment discrimination, which lacks a clear distinction between public interest disclosures and workplace grievances, is unsuited to hosting a functional equivalent of whistleblower protection.

The findings suggest that transplanting whistleblowing protection into Chilean law requires more than adopting statutory language–it demands deeper institutional and cultural adjustments to achieve the intended function. From a comparative law methodology, this Thesis contributes to scholarship by illustrating the limitations of functionalist assumptions and the importance of historical and systemic context in the adoption of whistleblower protection in Chile.