Vol 16, No 31 (2017): enero-junio

The classic definition of the administrative action implies an expression of will of the Administration intended to take legal effects; in this way, unilateral and discretional criteria have prevailed in their nature; however, this research provides new statements on such nature from the nonexistence of the administrative discretion, in order to set the proper criterion in the juridical definition and nature of the administrative action. This article contains reflections and arguments from the Colombian doctrine, jurisprudence, and legislation, but holding a criterion of compared law which allows making a proper analysis of the topic.

This article analyzes the role to be accomplished by the economic law as the articulating element of society-nature relationship in order to achieve an integral development for Colombia within the framework of the social right State. This purpose implies the establishment of the origins of economic law from the relationships which emerge between law and economics and presenting it as an autonomous branch of law and differentiating it from the approach of the economic analysis of law. From this point of view, the economic law has become an important tool to facilitate the governmental intervention in the economy in order to correct market failures, including the ones arising from contamination. The big challenge for humankind in the 21st century is to search for the way to solve environmental damage issues; in this sense, this article shows the economic law as a good alternative to reach the balance of the relationships between society and nature.

From a juridical analysis about the regulation of states of emergency in the Colombian juridical system and the assessment conducted by the Constitutional Court, this article is intended to show that, thanks to the 1991 Colombian Constitution, today there is a state of emergency system in Colombia which holds strong warranties and controls to protect human rights. For this reason, a historical journey will be made on such figure, establishing the most important aspects currently active in current regulation on emergency powers. Finally, the article will address the study of each state of emergency: state of foreign war (article 212 of the Political Constitution); state of internal disturbance (article 213 of the Political Constitution; and state of economic, social, and ecologic emergency (article 215 of the Political Constitution), clearly defining nature, limitations, and budgets of each one, which will allow us to demonstrate the Copernican turn with respect to the former state of siege.

The juridical pluralism shows that the problem of the law sources not only from the State because organized communities also produce norms. Then, which would be the basis of such plural juridical comprehension? It is possible to find an emancipation-type rationality which views the juridical pluralism as a reasonable capacity to emancipate the individuals in a specific situation of oppression. However, the idea of such rationality should be observed within a concrete historical reality and that implies the observation of the type of rationality as critical potentiality of law. This article includes the limitations of emancipating rationalism and explores the criticality of juridical pluralism in the peripheral reality. The general objective of the study is to make a reflection on the limitations of emancipating rationalism and, specifically, to renew the perspective of emancipating rationality in the pluralist horizon of liberation. Such objectives will be reached through a bibliographic research and an analytical methodology. Hence, the contribution of this study is to open the emancipating horizon as an intra-modern phenomenon and to verify the existence of other aspects.

This article is intended to remark the importance of critical thought in the learning and teaching process of procedural law, stating some questions about what we are actually teaching as Law, why is it necessary to teach law, and how we should do it. Concerning methodologies to teach and learn the law, the Socratic method seems to be the suitable method to understand the normative phenomenon, since it obliges teachers and students to formulate questions following rules of thinking and construct responses within a context of dialogue. This facilitates the development of several stages of thinking until reaching the critical thinking which implies a self-reflection. The development of a method similar to the Socratic method allows setting aside the traditional teaching model, facilitates progress and demonstration of students’ skills, and it can be applicable in conjunction with new communication technologies.

The shallow study conducted about the freedom of procreation has been extremely permissive, setting aside the segment of responsibility of the active parties holding such human right; this has caused a scarce governmental intervention in family planning and a dramatic demographic explosion which implies problems inherent to overpopulation. The increase of population (and relevant imminent problems) promoted the need for identifying its causes in order to search for the actions to be taken to fight them; the shallow state participation was then seen as the main cause, so it was decided to interpret such right in the light of the weighting theory which, through its method mainly supported in the weight law, has proven to be very useful for the solution of collision of laws, intended to adjust the individuals’ interests to those of society, allowing setting new public policies that help reduce the alarming demographic explosion. 

Convergence of creative elements such as literature, music, painting, and even film in the production of videogames has allowed them to be ranked as the eighth art in the framework of creative industries. However, such a work should hold an information technology support that allows it to be played and set by the user, which implies a degree of unusual interaction in all other creations made part of it. The main objective of this article is to set, through a qualitative research, the most appropriate way of legally protecting videogames; despite an arrangement has been developed worldwide based on two important branches of copyrights (software and multimedia works), both show failures which could be easily repaired either by applying an analogy with cinematographic work or by creating a specific work category known as videogame.

Disciplinary law consists of a set of substantive and procedura juridical norms intended to set certain reproachable actions foreseeing the penalties that can be imposed to a number of people through a special procedure. As punitive law, it consists of types which set facts and relevant penalty; however, they hold a flexible structure in disciplinary issues. This article states and concludes that incomplete norms may affect the due process. The article starts expressing the nature of disciplinary law and its succinct application with respect to the right of due process.

This article is intended to conduct a study on the abuse of the rights of majorities in business entities in Colombia. Therefore, an exposition of the generic aspects will be made on the doctrine of abuse of law and several institutions of company law in Colombia in order to give the juridical-business community in Colombia a solution proposal based on the abuse in a neo-contractual interpretation and application of the different norms that integrate our company law system.