Access to public information and emails of public officials in Chile

This paper analyzes the major conflicts that have arisen to exercise the right of access to public information regarding institutional emails of public officials. It proposes a specific regulation on the subject that, under certain circumstances, it allows public access to certain content in which the general interest may be eventually compromised. It makes an analysis of recent rulings of the Constitutional Court, which has refused access to this because they essentially are private communications, excluded from the knowledge of others. It poses the problem of the lack of certainty from a legal, doctrinal and judicial point of views over the legitimacy of access to information contained in emails. On the other hand, the rights of institutional emails of public officials are expressed by the statutory legal hypothesis which includes the possibility of access to these emails, considering the conflicting decisions of the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court and the Council for Transparency about the possibility of access (or not) to the contents of these.