Provisional suspension and the Colombian Constitution Court. Historical roots, persistence and transformations up to the present

Abstract

This article discusses a new role the Colombian Government intends to assign the Constitutional Court, which is to provisionally suspend the effects of any laws that have been challenged on grounds of unconstitutionality. The paper demonstrates that according to this new competence, the High Court would be able to suspend the effects of legislation. In this study we show that this apparently new role is in fact quite ancient in Colombian Public Law. In fact, this figure was already present in Colonial Law and was further developed during the 19th century through Supreme Court decisions.