Issue-Rule of Law
Citizen constitutionalism
Clemenceu once said that war is too serious a matter to leave to the military alone. I also believe that the Constitution is too serious a matter to leave to the constitutional courts alone.
Read MoreWho is a populist?
Populists are, in the end, antidemocratic. What’s more: they use democratic election and the language of democracy in order to undermine it.
Read MoreMoney and democracy
The revelations of these weeks showed that the campaigns of Santos 2010 and Zuluaga 2014 received concealed funding from Odebrecht, which allowed them to violate the electoral caps.
Read MoreSunflowers and tricks
In 2010, presidential campaign year, candidate Antanas Mockus designed his political proposal based on simple ideas like these: “not everything is fair game” and “public life and resources are sacred.”
Read MorePandora’s box?
What if we knew who killed Jorge Eliécer Gaitan ? Or if we had access to the private papers of General Rojas Pinilla? And if we could find the documents that explain the systematicity in the deaths of the Patriotic Union?
Read MoreIrrational political animals
Either humans lost their reason or there is a serious problem with our concept of reason. I understand those who are convinced of the first thing: millions of humans – self-defining rationals – are reluctant to believe in the benefits of vaccines, believe in the most implausible lies through social media, are destroying the planet where they live, and choosing egotists populist against their own interests.
Read MoreReasons for mandatory voting
The question about mandatory voting resurfaces with the Government’s proposal to include it in the package of reforms derived from the peace agreement. The discussion is deep, has occurred in many countries and involves arguments and studies that must be considered with pause.
Private life in a public way
The new Police Code confuses privacy with staying at home and targets the right to privacy.
Read MoreWhy people do not like the new Police Code
Colombia has a new Police Code. The law that created these new rules for “coexistence” has 241 articles, was drafted by the Ministry of Defense in the company of the same National Police and had the approval of Congress. Its spirit, the document says, is “preventive.”
Read MoreCorruption for dummies
Corruption is in fashion and despite this, it has never not been. The target is always politics, so that norms can be modified for the convenience of those who would corrupt, and they can slowly replace the State.
Read MoreBefore intimacy dissapears
It was after taking a look at 10 notebooks in which the Egyptian authorities showed him the printed version of all his e-mails, since he had opened his Gmail account, that Ilan Grapel knew he had to change his defense strategy. In this moment, he confirmed that he was no longer the 27-year-old- young american-israeli that had travelled to Cairo to help refugees from Iraq and Sudan. Instead he had become a dangerous spy deprived from his liberty.
Read MoreDemocracy, intimacy and transparency
Could an old and respectable democracy, such as the United States, be adopting authoritarian principles, characteristic of totalitarianism rather than of a state under the rule of law?
Read MoreA country of sophisticated lawyers
This has not been the year for lawyers. First, was the election of Alberto Rojas as judge of the Constitutional Court, in the midst of criticisms that remain unclear.
Read MoreThe institutional weakness of Colombian towns
Project institutions ad hoc for municipalities in Colombia
This text is a preliminary document of research, still in process, which will culminate in a book that will be published the first semester of 2013. This book offers input for a larger project, with a collective dimension, aimed at diagnosing the municipalities’ main problems. Through this assessment, the text will build indicators that allow a focus on the disparate action by the state in specific territories of the country. Therefore this text undertakes to interact with other documents that form a part of a collective project.
Read MoreThe abuse of Riopaila and Cargill
Read the reasons why the purchase was illegal and should be anuled.
Read MoreA ruling that is a bit sophisticated
A sentence of the Constitutional Court will be useful to stop the ‘advanced’ strategies of land accumulation.
Read MoreThe criminal populism of the General Inspector
The Inspector General and some leftist populist strands have one thing in common: trying to win plaudits from citizens through attractive-sounding measures, but these are impossible to achieve or are counterproductive.
Read MorePrioritization and the criminal justice system
The discussion on whether the Prosecutor’s Office should focus on investigating certain crimes rather than others is important and difficult. But it does have a reasonable solution.
Read MoreAn eye on privacy
In an imperceptible but safe way, others’ lives are becoming public or property of the state, thanks to Internet.
Read MoreRelocating legal general inspectors
The legal inspector generals are redundant and expensive posts. Therefore these should be suppressed or at least radically reduced.
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