Hercules in the Colombian Constitutional Court

Abstract

This paper explores how the Colombian Constitutional Court has used the legal and political philosophy of Ronald Dworkin to show that the use of the concepts of rights as trump cards, individual autonomy, and state neutrality, have configured the reception of egalitarian liberalism. This conclusion is reached by means of an analysis of the meaning and use of these concepts in certain judicial decisions and of personal interviews with certain head justices and law clerks of said Court, which also made it possible to frame this question within the larger issue of the relationship of philosophy to the decisions of the judges.