The Attorney General shall also file any appropriate action to hold liable public officials who have incurred civil, labor, military, criminal, administrative or disciplinary liability in the course of their official duties. The Office of the Defender of the People Defensoria del Pueblo is an independent body whose mission is to defend and protect human rights and other liberties and interests protected under the Constitution and the laws, in the face of deeds, acts or omissions of the administration.
The Defender of the People is appointed for a four-year term by Congress which selects one of the three candidates presented by the President. The Office of the Comptroller General Contraloria General de la Republica is headed by a Comptroller General appointed for a four-year period at the beginning of each presidential term by Congress, which selects one of the three candidates presented by the highest courts.
This officer shall be in charge of supervising the management and auditing of revenues, expenses, public and national property and transactions of the centralized and decentralized public entities, whatever its forms of organization may be, as well as of other branches of government. I t enjoys operating, administrative and functional autonomy.
It does not co-administer the public sector; it assesses facts, acts, and documents only after the organizations to be audited have finished their accounting exercises.
Its main task is the approval or rejection of the revenue and investment accounts of public funds, the opening of investigations into irregularities, and the application of measures and administrative penalties as appropriate.
The Comptroller General shall call on the Prosecutor General to file the legal actions that may apply. Colombia 's legal system has a legislative origin, grounded on the "written law" as opposed to the "common" or "judicial" law, which is the basis for American, English and Canadian legal systems. Being Colombia a civil law jurisdiction, its legal system has its roots in Roman Law and is heavily influenced by the French Napoleonic Code system and the Italian and Spanish legal traditions, which established written codification of its laws.
As systematic sets of rules pertaining to specific subject-matters, Codes thus emerged not long after the country became an independent nation. The first civil and penal codes appeared in As their models changed, all these codes underwent reforms throughout the twentieth century.
Unfortunately, they have not always benefited from the developments occurring in Europe. A major revision of the Civil Code is still intensely needed. The Commercial Code is also deficient insofar as its drafting, for the most part, has not embraced new ideas concerning business entities and entrepreneurial activity. The changes have been more significant and responsive to social needs in those areas, as recent code amendments attest. Nowadays, the principal Colombian codifications are the following:.
It governs contracts, torts, property, obligations, capacity of persons, marriage, divorce, paternity, guardianship, secured transactions, and succession. Of particular importance to business is the Commercial Code. For all matters not resolved by the Commercial Code, the provisions of the Civil Code shall be applied.
Colombian codification has expanded beyond the traditional areas civil, criminal, commercial, and procedure to cover a wide range of subjects child protection, national police, administrative procedure, etc. A complete list of and internet access to the Colombian codes is available online. As a rule, codes are organized into books, titles, chapters, articles, and sections. Titles are subdivided into chapters, which are sequential within their respective title only.
Chapters are further subdivided into articles, which are sequential throughout the code. Each article in the code gets a unique number. All one needs to find a particular article is its number, and not the book, title and chapter numbers. The quintessential source of Colombian legislation in the broadest sense of the word is the Diario Oficial, an official journal published since Regular issues are released daily except Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.
Laws are identified according to a numbering system beginning every year from one. Official chronological compilations of historical value are, among others, the following:. Electronic access to legislation is available through the Web sites of the Senate from on and the Presidency from August on. Other Web sites providing access to general or special legislation are:.
A good number of Colombian codes and laws have been translated into English. Most of them are available in print. A partial list follows:. A few items are available on line for free:. A few words about the value of jurisprudence in Colombia are in order. In Colombia, codification has not allowed case law to reach the same recognition it has within the Common Law system. An act or statute that contradicts a judgment may render it useless, and that legal provision is considered mandatory, as long as judges do not believe that it violates the Constitution,.
The role of case law is thus minimized by the tradition of codification and regulation and limited to fill in legislative blanks.
Although the three Colombian highest courts are considered the supreme interpreters of the Constitution and laws arising thereof, their decisions are not mandatory for similar cases. The Constitutional Court has its own monthly gazette entitled Gaceta de la Corte Constitucional, which collects its rulings since it started operating in ; there is also a semestral compilation entitled Gaceta Constitucional.
There is no comprehensive official or unofficial regular publication of lower court opinions. Another privately published monthly serial, Derecho Colombiano, features selections of lower court decisions. Some departments have their own judicial reviews revistas judiciales , which include the most important decisions of their courts.
This commercial Web site offers access to the highest court opinions to paying subscribers. As stated above, the publication in the Diario Oficial is a prerequisite to the enforcement of any regulatory instrument in Colombia.
The most important decrees and regulations on different subjects are also available in specialized commercial publications. Of course, the internet is quickly becoming the medium of choice for the dissemination of these materials.
The web site of the Presidency features a presidential decree and directive database including decrees and regulations issued from January on and directives from on. Since Congress regulates all areas of public administration, ministries and other agencies lack rulemaking power. As stated above, however, Ministries do issue resolutions on the matters of their competence. Each homepage of a Ministry site offers links to bodies of its own structure and to others which deal with the same subject.
A good number of these sites offers access to statutes, regulations, and resolutions in their respective specialties. The following is a list of those ministries currently offering access to those items:. Although this brief guide has been devoted mainly to primary sources of legal information, it will conclude with a short list of titles representative of the literature on Colombian law in English.
Although some of them are apparently outdated, they are still worth consulting because of the quality of the analysis and their value as providers of an overview of the legal system even today. Among the articles and notes on Colombian law published in American law reviews and journals in recent years, the following are worthy of mention:.
Table of Contents I. Executive Power 2. Legislative Power A. The President may also sign acts, but only with a recommendation from the Ministers, who would then be responsible for administering the act. The President also works with the governors of each Department similar to a Province within the country to ensure proper administration of the government.
These governors are also elected by the general population and once in office, they appoint a Department level Cabinet. The legislative branch of government in Colombia is responsible for enacting laws and policies. This is carried out by the bicameral Congress, which is made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The Senate members and the Representatives are elected by the general population to serve a 4-year term. Congress has the power to make amendments to the Constitution and to hold the executive branch accountable for carrying out public law correctly. Members of Congress meet twice a year, from July 20th to December 16th and from March 16th to June 20th. Numerous private sector actors work in close partnership with U. The United States and Colombia have signed agreements on trade; labor rights; environmental protection; asset sharing; control of chemicals; ship-boarding; renewable and clean energy; science and technology; and civil aviation.
Colombia is a strong supporter of bilingual education and academic mobility initiatives and the largest foreign government sponsor of the Fulbright program. The United States and Colombia enjoy robust cooperation on cultural heritage preservation, as formalized through a bilateral agreement on cultural property.
The binational centers provide a wide range of resources to the Colombian public, including high-quality English-language teaching and free cultural events and educational advising services. In April , Colombia joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as the 37th member and third country member from Latin America and the Caribbean. Principal U. Colombia maintains an embassy in the United States at Massachusetts Ave.
More information about Colombia is available from the Department of State and other sources, some of which are listed here:. Relations With Colombia Office of the U. Main changes include Colombia changing the shape of a decentralized unified state with a certain autonomy for its territorial entities, a presidential system, and the banning of the extradition of Colombian citizens. Presidential reelection has been banned completely and the power of judicial review was transferred from the supreme court of justice to an independent constitutional court.
Coat of Arms of Republic of Colombia. Grades each country on a scale of 0 to , based on ten freedoms, with representing the greatest amount of economic autonomy from government intervention.
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