Judicial self-restraint in the jurisprudence of the Colombian Constitutional Court

Abstract

Judicial self-restraint, also called self-restriction by the Colombian Constitutional Court, has been defined by the Court as a principle, a constitutionally important interpretative tool for the exercise of the jurisdictional power of the State, which seeks to counteract the subjectivism of judges and which is opposed to the figure of judicial activism. This research was based on the hypothesis that the Constitutional Court prefers activist positions over self-restraint positions when deciding on the matters it hears. The objective of this paper is to analyze the Colombian Constitutional Court's duty of self-restraint in the exercise of its acts of control. Through a review of the existing literature on the concept of judicial self-restraint, together with a review of the constitutional rulings in which the Court has referred to the concept of self-restraint, self-restraint or deference and particularly to the judgments issued in the framework of the regulation and implementation of the Final Peace Agreement between the National Government of Colombia and the FARC - EP, it was found that there is no agreement within the Court as to the scope of the concept of self-restraint and that, although it has been used by the Court, in most of the decisions examined, the Court is not self-restrained.