Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Cajas-Sarria on Colombian Constitutional History, 1910-1991

We have from Mario Cajas-Sarria, Associate Professor, Icesi University School of Law, Cali, Colombia, word that he has published, in Spanish, The Construction of Colombian Constitutional Justice: A Historical and Political Perspective, 1910-1991, in Revista Jurídica Precedente 7 (2015):
This article traces the path of reforms and attempts to reform the Colombian Constitutional Justice and reveals how political actors and scholars, with different purposes and strategies, under certain political contexts and legal doctrines, built it between 1910 and 1991. The narrative evolves in five stages: It begins in 1910 when the Constituent Assembly attributed to the Supreme Court the duty and power to decide on the constitutionality of laws before she claimed by any citizen. The second is the military government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who tried to establish a Constitutional Court in 1953 and then established a “Chamber of Constitutional Affairs” within the Supreme Court in 1956. The third tells of the attempt to create a Constitutional Court in 1968, which ended in a modest Constitutional Chamber within the Supreme Court. The fourth deals with the failed constitutional amendment of 1979 that modified the functions of the Supreme Court as a constitutional judge and which was declared unconstitutional by that same Court late in 1981. The last stage is the creation of the Constitutional Court by the National Constituent Assembly 1991.