Jaime Arancibia

Jaime Arancibia Mattar (born 21 March 1975) is a Chilean lawyer, academic and politician, affiliated with the National Renewal party. His fields of expertise include administrative law, constitutional law, and free competition.

He was a member of the Expert Commission created to draft a preliminary constitutional text during the 2023 Chilean constitutional process.

Biography He was born in Viña del Mar in 1975, but lived in Arica until the age of 18. He is the son of Jaime Arancibia, distinguished as an Illustrious Son of the commune and region of Arica, and María Graciela Mattar. His brother, Pablo Arancibia, has served as Seremi of Economy and Finance of the Arica Region and President of the Board of Directors of the University of Tarapacá.

On 19 May 2001, he married María Carolina Zúñiga Silva, with whom he has three children: Jaime, María Ignacia, and Isidora.

He studied law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, graduating as a lawyer on 31 August 1999. He later obtained a PhD in Law from the University of Cambridge (2005), supported by British Chevening and Cambridge Overseas Trust scholarships, as well as the Chilean Presidential Scholarship. His doctoral thesis, Judicial Review of Commercial Regulation, was published by Oxford University Press in 2011 and has been cited by major UK administrative law textbooks.

Professional career Arancibia has combined academic and public service. He was an associate researcher at the Centre for Public Law at the University of Cambridge (2007–2012).

He served as Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs at the University of the Andes (2010–2013). He was appointed Alternate Minister of the Tribunal for the Defense of Free Competition (2014–2016) by President Michelle Bachelet, and later served as a full member (2016–2018) designated by the Board of the Central Bank.

He was President of the Administrative Law Association of Chile (2017–2020) and a member of the panel of arbitrators appointed by the Supreme Court of Chile to resolve disputes in public works concessions (2011–2016 and 2016–2021).

Since 2021, he has been a member of the Fondecyt Legal and Social Sciences Committee. He is currently Director of the Department of Public Law at the University of the Andes. His academic specialties are administrative and constitutional law, with multiple publications and research projects. Among them, the most relevant contribution to the constitutional debate is his book Constitución Política de la República. Edición Histórica. Origen y trazabilidad de sus normas desde 1812 (2020).

In January 2023, he was appointed by the Senate of Chile as a member of the Expert Commission, established by Law No. 21.533, tasked with drafting a preliminary text for a new Constitution to be submitted to the Constitutional Council. Within the commission, he joined the Subcommission on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights.