The new accusatory system that began to govern 20 days ago promises a substantial improvement in justice, but there is a lot to do to achieve it.

The paper analyzes the attempts of Colombian Constitutional Court to control the abuse of presidential emergency powers in the last decade. After describing the dilemmas that governmental emergency powers pose to constitutional regimes and explaining some particularities of Colombian (a democracy under permanent emergency), the article focuses on the efforts of the Constitutional Court to exercise a “material” control of the declaration of a state of emergency by the President. According to this legal doctrine, it is the duty of the Court to analyze if the facts invoked by the government constitute a crisis severe enough to justify the use of emergency powers. The article shows that the Court has exercised this material control in a quite strict way and has nullified several declarations of a state of emergency by different presidents. The article tries then to analyze how this form of judicial review has been possible in a country like Colombia, with a precarious democracy and a cruel armed conflict. The article describes also the impact of this form of judicial control in Colombian politics and offer some more general conclusions based on Colombian experience

The criminal trial reform seeks more efficient means of investigation, clearer judgments, more independent judges and more protected guarantees.

The idea to improve the judicial defense system of Colombia is not that it will always be successful in winning cases but rather at times when cases are lost; it is because of the abuses that haunt you. Rodrigo Uprimny’s response to reactions to his column about the judicial defense system in Colombia.

The re-election of George W. Bush will bring important consequences for American foreign policy on Latin America. César Rodríguez analyzes the effect of the election results on the Colombian Plan and on the negotiations of the United States-Colombia Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Andean countries.

Danilo Rojas analyzes the ‘Essay on Lucidity’ by Saramago, which describes the incapacity of rulers to be viewed critically and their stupidity to believe that the population will always be seduced by their speeches that are rich with holiness or patriotism.