The Council of State of Colombia (Spanish : Consejo de Estado de Colombia) is the supreme tribunal with jurisdiction over administrative issues in Colombia. [1]
Created in 1817 by Simón Bolívar, the Council of State of Colombia is the oldest judicial organ still in operation in Latin America. It was abolished in 1843 but reconstituted in 1886. [2]
The State Council comprises twenty-seven judges who serve a term of eight years. It appoints its own judges from lists submitted by the Superior Council of the Judiciary. There are five sections dealing with different specialized topics. [3] [4]
Anyone may request the Council of State to rule on whether a given administrative action complies with the law and the Constitution. The Council may suspend any actions judged not to so comply. [1] It also provides non-binding advice to Government, which is required to consult it on proposed measures within a defined scope. [3]
The Council may: introduce bills relating to its functions; cancel the investiture of members of Congress in accordance with law; and make a ruling on the transit of foreign troops through the national territory. [4]
On December 11, 2001, the Council of State, through its Consultation and Civil Services Office, issued the first legal opinion concerning the domain name .co
, establishing the status of that domain name as denoting the nation of Colombia. [5]
The Council of State was consulted in 2009 on a proposed agreement to permit increased use of Colombian bases by US military personnel. [6] Despite criticism by the Council describing some aspects of the pact as "very broad and imbalanced", in October President Alvaro Uribe went ahead and signed the agreement. [7]
After abortion was partially legalized in Colombia in 2006, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection issued guidelines regulating abortion services. However, in 2009 the Council of State, ruling that the Ministry was not entitled to regulate abortion, suspended these guidelines, and in 2013 annulled them, leaving Colombia without official recommendations on abortion methods. [8]
In March 2012 the Council of State overruled the appointment as Chief Prosecutor of Viviane Morales Hoyes, on the grounds that the process of electing her in the Supreme Court had been invalid. [9]
In May 2015 the Council of State for a second time suspended the sale of the Government stake in the electricity company Isagen SA, in order to consider appeals against the sale. [10]
The politics of Bolivia takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the president is head of state, head of government and head of a diverse multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament. Both the Judiciary and the electoral branch are independent of the executive and the legislature. After the 2014 Bolivian general election, 53.1% of the seats in national parliament were held by women, a higher proportion of women than that of the population.
Abortion laws vary widely among countries and territories, and have changed over time. Such laws range from abortion being freely available on request, to regulation or restrictions of various kinds, to outright prohibition in all circumstances. Many countries and territories that allow abortion have gestational limits for the procedure depending on the reason; with the majority being up to 12 weeks for abortion on request, up to 24 weeks for rape, incest, or socioeconomic reasons, and more for fetal impairment or risk to the woman's health or life. As of 2022, countries that legally allow abortion on request or for socioeconomic reasons comprise about 60% of the world's population. In 2024, France became the first country to explicitly protect abortion rights in its constitution, while Yugoslavia implicitly inscribed abortion rights to its constitution in 1974.
Ayuntamiento is the general term for the town council, or cabildo, of a municipality or, sometimes, as is often the case in Spain and Latin America, for the municipality itself. Ayuntamiento is mainly used in Spain; in Latin America alcaldía is also for municipal governing bodies, especially the executive ones, where the legislative body and the executive body are two separate entities. In Catalan-speaking parts of Spain, municipalities generally use the Catalan cognate, ajuntament, while Galician ones use the word concello, Astur-Leonese conceyu and Basque udaletxea. Since ayuntamiento is a metonym for the building in which the council meets, it also translates to "city/town hall" in English.
In criminal law, a sentence is the punishment for a crime ordered by a trial court after conviction in a criminal procedure, normally at the conclusion of a trial. A sentence may consist of imprisonment, a fine, or other sanctions. Sentences for multiple crimes may be a concurrent sentence, where sentences of imprisonment are all served together at the same time, or a consecutive sentence, in which the period of imprisonment is the sum of all sentences served one after the other. Additional sentences include intermediate, which allows an inmate to be free for about 8 hours a day for work purposes; determinate, which is fixed on a number of days, months, or years; and indeterminate or bifurcated, which mandates the minimum period be served in an institutional setting such as a prison followed by street time period of parole, supervised release or probation until the total sentence is completed.
The Union of South American Nations (USAN), sometimes also referred to as the South American Union, abbreviated in Spanish as UNASUR and in Portuguese as UNASUL, is an intergovernmental regional organization. It once comprised twelve South American countries; as of 2019, most have withdrawn. It was set up by Hugo Chavez to counteract the influence of the United States in the region.
The Political Constitution of Colombia of 1991, is the Constitution of the Republic of Colombia. It was promulgated in Constitutional Gazette number 114 on Sunday, July 7, 1991, and is also known as the Constitution of Human Rights. It replaced the Political Constitution of 1886 and was issued during the presidency of the liberal César Gaviria, with ideas from the also liberal Luis Carlos Galán.
The Independent Movement of Absolute Renovation is a political party in Colombia, founded in 2000 by 51,095 Colombians led by lawyer and former senator Carlos Alberto Baena and Alexandra Moreno Piraquive. The party also has functions as a non-profit organization. It has representation in the Chamber of Representatives and in the Senate of the Congress of Colombia, and has also participated in the public corporations of Colombia at a regional level, being stated as the eighth-most influential political force in the country.
The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is a professional association of abortion providers. NAF members include private and non-profit clinics, Planned Parenthood affiliates, women's health centers, physicians' offices, and hospitals who together perform approximately half of the abortions in the U.S. and Canada each year. NAF members also include public hospitals and both public and private clinics in Mexico City and private clinics in Colombia.
Michael Angelo Morales is an American convicted murderer who was scheduled to be executed by the State of California on February 21, 2006. Two hours before the scheduled execution, the State of California notified the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that they could not comply with a lower federal judge's ruling that the execution must be carried out by a medical professional due to the chemical used in the execution. Consequently, California has indefinitely suspended Morales's execution. The case subsequently led to a moratorium on capital punishment in California entirely, as the only legal method of execution must be carried out with the participation of a licensed physician, who are ethically prohibited from participating in executions.
Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego is a Colombian politician who is the 34th and current president of Colombia since 2022. Upon inauguration, he became the first left-wing president in the recent history of Colombia.
Abortion in Colombia is freely available on request up to the 24th week of pregnancy, due to a ruling by the Constitutional Court on February 21, 2022. Later in pregnancy, it is only allowed in cases of risk of death to the pregnant woman, fetal malformation, or rape, according to a Constitutional Court ruling in 2006.
The law of Panama is based on civil law with influences from Spanish legal tradition and Roman laws. For the first several years of its existence Panamanian law depended upon the legal code inherited from Colombia. The first Panamanian codes, promulgated in 1917, were patterned upon those of Colombia and other Latin American states that had earlier broken away from the Spanish Empire. Therefore, Panama's legal heritage incorporated elements from Spain and its colonies.
Carlos Eduardo Medellín Becerra is a Colombian lawyer and diplomat and has served as Minister of Justice of Colombia and as Ambassador of Colombia to the United Kingdom.
Viviane Aleyda Morales Hoyos was the 7th Attorney General of Colombia and the first woman to hold that post. She was elected by the Supreme Court of Justice out of a list of three candidates presented by President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón that also included Juan Carlos Esguerra Portocarrero and Carlos Gustavo Arrieta Padilla. On 2 March 2012, she resigned days after her election as Attorney General was invalidated by the Council of State due to irregularities in her election. Her resignation was accepted on 5 March 2012 by the Supreme Court.
The Scottish Sentencing Council is an advisory non-departmental public body in Scotland that produces sentencing guidelines for use in the High Court of Justiciary, sheriff courts and justice of the peace courts. Judges, sheriffs, and justices of the peace must use the guidelines to inform the sentence they pronounce against a convict, and they must give reasons for not following the guidelines.
María José Segarra Crespo, is a Spanish jurist, Attorney General between 2018 and 2020. She began her career in the prosecutor's office in 1987. From 2004 to 2018 she was in charge of the Prosecutor's Office of Province of Seville.
Eduardo Torres-Dulce Lifante is a Spanish prosecutor, professor of Criminal Law and a film critic. He was, from December 2011 to December 2014, State Attorney General. He has now returned to his position as Prosecutor at the Constitutional Court.
Martha Lucía Zamora Ávila is a Colombian lawyer and politician. She served as Attorney General of Colombia from 5 to 29 March 2012, after the resignation of Viviane Morales.
María Claudia Rojas Lasso is a Colombian jurist who serves as chairman of the Investigative Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee since 11 May 2017. From January 2014 to March 2015, she was the judge of the country's highest administrative court as President of the Council of State of Colombia. She is a specialist in bioethics and an expert in analysis and conflict resolution and graduated in international tax law.
The Somos Región Colombia Party, or simply Partido Somos, was a Colombian political party and successor to the ALAS Team Colombia party, a center-right political alliance born from the merging of the Alternative for Social Advance (ALAS) party, founded by Álvaro Araújo Castro, and the Team Colombia party, which ran in the March 2006 Legislative Elections. ALAS Team Colombia was a part of a coalition of parties that supported the 2002-2010 Álvaro Uribe Vélez campaign and government. The alliance between the two parties ended in September 2009, after a mutual agreement to dissolve; ALAS retained its legal status as a party, while Team Colombia members mostly joined the Colombian Conservative Party. ALAS, however, did not obtain the necessary number of votes in the following 2010 Colombian Legislative Election to maintain its legal status as a valid political party. But, in 2017 it was able to restore its legal status as the Partido Somos Región Colombia.