COURT SUPREMACY: CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW OF LIVING LAW IN COLOMBIA

The article argues that the Constitutional Court has used the provision/regulation distinction by strategically exerting control over the jurisprudence of high courts in order to recognize its functional superiority as guardian of the Constitution and obtain judicial support for its decisions, avoiding direct confrontations or "choque de trenes" with such courts. As a result, some ambiguities about the conception and application of living law are presented. To formulate this hypothesis, the article is divided into three parts. The first one presents the use of the provision/regulation distinction and its political repercussions and then systematically reconstructs the doctrine, meaning and scope of living law, as a constitutional scenario in which such distinction is applicable. The second part evaluates the strategic use of clarity and ambiguity in the doctrine, interpreting the sense of constitutional validity of living law, how it is controlled with respect to the legal community and its extension to the inter-American jurisprudence. The last part summarizes the conclusions.