Plague, constitutional democracy and states of exception in Colombia

Abstract

The unexpected arrival of a plague constitutes an undesirable company for the human being. This is to be avoided at all costs due to the traumatic havoc caused by its stay. Its short or long passage through the world is unavoidable, ideally, counteracting its despicable and denigrating effects to its minimum proportions. In this sense, and without ignoring other investigative variables at play, the relationship between the strength of legal-political institutions, on the one hand, and the effectiveness of legal-political decisions, on the other, is what will largely prevent the proliferation and profusion of infections. From this perspective, the uses and abuses in the treatment and management of the plague carried out by the anti-democratic figure of States of exception in Colombia can be examined and criticized. Likewise, as a shield of defense and protection against the present and future plagues that make humanity agonize, a series of minimum and necessary conditions of possibility are proposed, inspired by the model of Constitutional Democracy and Constitutional Rule of Law, and irradiated from the juridical-political culture of the Italian thinker Luigi Ferrajoli, such as (i) strengthening of Congress, (ii) creation of statutory law for powers of exception in pandemics, and (iii) indispensable judicial guarantees.