Vol 3, No 6 (2004)

In the contemporary western societies corruption presents a deep internal contradiction: the political appropriation of the phenomenon because it ends to be functional for the maintenance of the system, and the juridic motivation that it tries to modify the status quo. This has created a tension between the law-judicial and the politic-legislative-executive. This tension is visible in two specific social situations: the normative syndrome and the symbolic effectiveness. In these two events, the law tries to prevail on the political praxis, imposing not only its logic but also its value system. But politics does not accept ties, since power reproduces itself; it’s in these spaces when politics reaches it’s main goal: to grow. This growth is paradoxically attained through the very same subject that it tries to control: the law This complex process of interaction between politics and law, in corruption, is the objetive of this essay. Por this purpose will will be necessary to explore the meaning and the scope of corruption today, as well as the symbolic  effectiveness and the normative syndrome, in order to try to establish the connections between these three concepts.

This article aims at expounding –from within the juridical theory– a basis to the social rights and at highlighting those latter in the Colombian Constitutional context in a way where we would advance towards acknowledging that social rights are of obligatory compliance to all powers and deserve juridical protection.

At a first instance, the basic rights are approached from the formal point of view with their implications on social rights; then the Colombian Constitutional ordinance is examined. On the other hand, basic rights are analyzed from the material point of view with their influence over the realisation of social rights, in order to allow us, therefore, to propose concrete conclusions.

En su larga vida, Norberto Bobbio (18 de octubre de 1909 - 9 de enero de 2004) ha sido hijo y testigo de ese “siglo breve” que más allá de las fechas convencionales, de acuerdo con Hobsbawm, comenzó con la Primera Guerra Mundial y concluyó con la suerte final de la revolución soviética. Reflejando personal e intelectualmente los principales acontecimientos y convulsiones de esa terrible época, sus primeros recuerdos se remontan precisamente a la Primera Guerra Mundial, durante la cual estalló victoriosa la revolución en Rusia.

The author aims at: (1) Analyzing Hobb’s and Lock’s social-pact models, showing their defficiencies, especially their link to a political optimism, proved to be wrong through facts. (2) Proposing a criteria based upon the coexistence dynamism for the evaluation of the political legitimacy , a criteria that would serve as an approach to history and to the socialization process developed in it. (3) Describing the basic kinds of societies, making a special emphasis on the characteristics of the human kind fostered by liberal societies with a high technological development.

The text is inscribed within what one might denominate as a disenchanted rationalism. Rousseau provides some of the instruments applied and developed herein.