The Banality of Evil
In a recent interview, Timochenko attempts to change the FARC’s image as a cruel and soulless group.
Read MoreWhy Not a Constitutional Constituent Assembly?
In other op-eds I have explained the enormous risks of a constitutional constituent assembly as a popular vote mechanism for the peace accord.
Read MoreThe Day the Court Heard Atrato
Last week, the members of Constitutional Court Judge Jorge Iván Palacio’s office conducted a judicial inspection of the Atrato River to determine the contamination due to illegal mining in the zone.
Read MoreJudiciary: Time To React!
The judiciary should react to its legitimacy and credibility crisis.
Read MoreThe National Museum of Memory: A Moral Duty
To read this post in English click here.
“This is a permanent process of creating memory. These are the pieces of brick that we brought for the construction of this, our memory This painful clay will be transformed, and we will be strengthened in the unity of our dreams” (Reference to Salón del Nunca Más, Granada, Antioquia)
Read MoreDefending the Ombudsman’s Office
The forced and late resignation of the Ombudsman opens the possibility for president Santos to unleash a virtious cycle: reinforce a far-reaching institution like the ombudsman’s office, regain the prestige of the ombudsman’s post, and improve gender equity at the highest levels of government.
Read MorePiketty and Inequality
Professor Thomas Piketty gave a talk this week in the Universidad Externado. The auditorium was packed and what impressed me most was the attendance of a good part of the country’s economic and political decisionmakers.
Read MoreA World with Hunger
The problem of world hunger is not due to scarcity of food, but rather because of inequality accessing it.
Read MoreLessons of a Resignation
Little comes out of the ex-ombudsman Otálora’s resignation if with it the debate about sexual harrassment ends. If there was something good about the scandal, it was the collective indigation and the visibility that it gave to the mistreament that many workers bear in silence, and the sexual harrasment that many women suffer in offices, universities, and other places.
Read MoreHow Legal Is It to Record Videos of Citizens and Upload Them to the Internet?
Disciplinary or… ideological surveillance ?
The disciplinary power exists to sanction a civil servant abusing power or not meeting his functions.
Read MoreConflicts in the State: between clashes and counterbalances
Prosecutor versus Inspector General, Mayor versus President, Court versus Court: the constant clashes between powers are worrisome for public opinion, but they are not always negative . A perceptive analysis about when these conflicts are healthy and when they are harmful.
Read MoreThe judge and Firavitova’s widow
I was disciple of Alberto Rojas. A disciple was how the new judge of the Constitutional Court called those who attended his classes of procedural law. “You know who my reflectors are?” asked Rojas during the mendacious radio interview in which he denied the support of Zulema Jattin. “My disciples: I have nothing else.”
Read MoreThe peace framework and the importance of its controversy
The public debate regarding how to deal with the consequences of the armed conflict and the best ways of overcoming it and not living it again, is perhaps one of the most important discussions that should take place in the country. The negotiation table at Havana and the possible agreements that could be achieved have awakened, therefore, an important and necessary debate. The recently approved constitutional reform known as the legal framework for the peace has also gained attention.
Read MoreAn unfortunate occupation
The installation of Alberto Rojas as judge of the Constitutional Court, despite the journalistic claim that he might have appropriated the compensation of a widow due to the death of her husband, is unfortunate for the country, for the Court, for the Government, and especially for Rojas himself, whose legitimacy remains at stake.
Read MoreThe right to charge water
Some days ago a video re-emerged in which the President of Nestlé says that water is not a right, but must be privatized.
Read MoreThe locomotive without tracks
The announcement finally became a reality: the mining locomotive was left without its last tracks, due to the Government’s incapacity to impulse a new mining code in replacement of the one that wasn´t approved by the Constitutional Court in 2011.
Read MoreEgalitarian marriage after June 20th?
Congress definitely did not approve egalitarian marriage, this is, it did not extend to same-sex couples the right to get married that, us, heterosexual couples currently have. But it did not approve another kind of contract allowing same-sex couples to solemnize their family union. Therefore the question about what is going to happen since June 20th, given that the Constitutional Court ordered as consequence to a lawsuit we presented, along with several organizations, against the exclusively heterosexual definition of marriage in the civil Colombian law, and pointed out the following in the resolution: “If Congress has not issued the corresponding legislation by June 20th, same-sex couples can go before the competent notary or judge and formalize and solemnize their contractual link”.
Read MorePhantoms of the XVI century in the Senate
The discussions in the Senate are not far from the controversies of the conquest epoch.
Read MoreJurists, historians and the Constitution
Jurists are usually bad historians. But historians are usually jurists when they establish the meaning of a norm using historic methods.
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