The constitutional court and control of presidential extraordinary powers in Colombia

Democratization and the Judiciary: The Accountability Function of Courts in New Democracies

Volumn , Issue , 2004, Pages 33-49

  Uprimny, Rodrigo ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE COLOMBIA   (Colombia)

^b Constitutional Court of Colombia ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84905529155     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203485408     Document Type: Chapter

References (31)

1. On the history of the abuse of emergency powers in Colombia see Libardo Jose Ariza, Felipe Cammaert and Manuel Alejandro Iturralde, Estados de Excepción y Razón de Estado en Colombia (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes; 1997);
2. Antonio Barreto, The Dynamics of Emergency Powers Within Constitutional Systems: The State and the Civil Society of Colombia-Besieged Between Violence and Emergency Powers (unpublished JSD dissertation proposal, Yale University, 2002);
3. Gustavo Gallón, Quince Anos de Estado de Sitio en Colombia 1958-1978 (Bogotá: Libreria y Editorial America Latina, 1979);
4. Mauricio García Villegas, 'Constitucionalismo perverso, normalidad y anormalidad constitucional en Colombia: 1957-1997', in Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Mauricio Garcia Villegas (eds), El caleidoscopio de la justicia colombiana (Bogotá: Uniandes, UN, Siglo del Hombre, 2001).
5. For some classical approaches to the concept of constitutional dictatorship, see Carl Friedrich, Teoria y realidad de la organización constitucional democràtica (México: Fondo de Cultura Democràtica, 1946), p.246 and
6. Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship. Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies (New York: Habringer Edition, 1963), p.7. The essence of this institution is that it is a mechanism of concentration of power and restriction of liberties (and in that sense it is a dictatorship), but with the goal of defending the constitutional order and not of destroying it (in that sense it is still a constitutional regime).
7. This stance has been adopted by some Latin-American scholars and human rights activists due to the extensive abuse of emergency powers in the region. For instance, in a workshop in Montevideo in 1986, many participants expressed support for 'promoting a legal and political consensus to exclude from constitutional texts any norm that authorizes any kind of emergency powers'. See Coloquio de Montevideo, 'Declaración final' in Diego García Sayán, Estado de emergencia en la región andina (Lima: Comisión Andina de Juristas, 1987), p.58.
8. Robert Burt, 'Judicial Supremacy, Judicial Impotence and the Rule of Law in Times of Crisis', in &http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/lawfac/fiss/eburt.pdf, VI-39.
9. Malcom Deas, 'Algunas notas sobre la historia del caciquismo en Colombia', Revista de Occidente, No.127 (1973), p.29.
10. See Alain Tourraine, Les sociétés Dépendantes (Paris: Duculot, 1976), p.85.
11. See Luis Jorge Garay, Colombia, entre la exclusion y el desarrollo (Bogotá: Contraloría General de la República, 2002), p.28.
12. Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, Panorama de derechos humanos y derecho humanitario en Colombia (Bogotá: Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, 2000), p.9.
13. See Ann Mason, 'La crisis de seguridad en Colombia: causas y consecuencias de un Estado en via de fracaso', Colombia Internacional, No.49-50 (2001).
14. For a good analysis of these different approaches to the Colombian crises and their implications, see Ana Maria Bejarano and Eduardo Pizarro, 'De la "democracia restringida" a la "democracia asediada": Para entender la crisis colombiana', paper submitted to the Workshop 'Advances and Set-backs in the Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America', Notre Dame University, Illinois, USA, 2001.
15. See Gallón (note 1); Rodrigo Uprimny, '&De la constitución inacabada a la constitución de excepción? El debate sobre la ley estatutaria de los estados de excepción', Revista del Colegio de Abogados Penalistas del Valle, No. 31-32 (1999), p.25; and Garcia Villegas (note 1) p.334.
16. See Gallón (note 1) p.139.
17. For information on the Constituent Assembly, see Jaime Buenahora, El proceso constituyente (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo, 1992).
18. see Ruti Teitel, 'Transitional Jurisprudence, The Role of Law in Political Transformation', Yale Law Journal, Vol.106, No.7 (1997), p.2014.
19. According to García Villegas (note 1) p.336, 10 out of 237 decrees were declared unconstitutional because of the absence of a 'link' (conexidad) with the public order disturbance.
20. See García Villegas (note 1) p.370. The figures alone do not give a clear meaning because the orientation of the decisions in judicial review depends not only on the severity of the judicial control but also on the nature of the measures taken by the government. But it is nevertheless realistic to assume that the government during both periods took very similar and harsh measures. If that is correct, the quantitative data is a valid indicator to express differences in the strictness of judicial control.
21. Libardo Ariza and Antonio Barretto, 'La Corte Constitutional frente a la excepcionalidad: diez anos de control material laxo y discursivo', in Observatorio de Justicia Constitutional. Derecho Constitutional. Perspectivas criticas, No.2, (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 2001), p.163.
22. On the preliminary attempts to restrict the powers of the court, see Juan Gabriel Gómez, 'Fueros y desafueros. justicia y contrarreforma en Colombia', Análisis Politico, No.25 (1995).
23. For a general overview of the Court's work, see Manuel José Cepeda, 'Democracy, State and Society in the 1991 Constitution: The Role of the Constitutional Court', in Eduardo Posada Carbó (ed.), Colombia: The Politics of Reforming the State (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 1998), p.91. According to Cepeda, 'almost all key issues of modern constitutional law have been dealt with by the court'.
24. For an analysis of the progressive potential of the rulings of the Court, see Rodrigo Uprimny and Mauricio Garcia Villegas, 'Tribunal Constitucional e emancipaçã social na Colombia', in Boavertura de Sous Santos (ed.), Democratizar a democracia. Os caminhos da democracia participativa (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Cvilizacao Brasileira, 2002), pp. 298-339 (available in English at http://www.ces.fe.uc.pt/emancipa/research/en/texts.html.
25. See Herbert Jacob et al., Courts, Law and Politics in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), p.396.
26. See Santos and García Villegas (note 1) p.1996.
27. See Cepeda (note 28) p.76.
28. On the influence that the perceived mission of an institution has on the behaviour of its members, see Howard Gillman, 'The Court as an Idea, not a Building (or a Game): Interpretive Institutionalism and the Analysis of Court Decision-Making', in Cornell W. Clayton and Howard Gillman (eds), Supreme Court Decision-Making. New Institutionalist Approaches (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p.83.
29. See García Villegas (note 1) p.358
30. Ariza and Barreto (note 25) p.171.
31. The distinction between dramatic and routine justice was proposed by Santos and García Villegas (note 1). It has been used also to study the Colombian judicial system. See César Rodriguez, Mauricio Garcia Villegas and Rodrigo Uprimny 'Justice and Society in Colombia: A Sociolegal Analysis of Colombian Courts', in Lawrence Friedman and Rogelio Perez-Perdomo (eds), Legal Culture in the Age of Globalization: Latin Europe and Latin America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, forthcoming).