Administrative morality in Colombia

This dissertation analyzes a cause of action created by the Colombian constitutional reform of 1991: administrative morality. This cause of action was created with the purpose of facilitating citizen engagement in governmental administration by allowing ordinary people to file a lawsuit to challenge governmental corruption. This constitutional reform fostered high hopes of law-inspired social change. The Constitution of 1991 did not define administrative morality and there has been no study of its meaning or effect. This dissertation addresses two questions: what is administrative morality? And what has been the impact of this cause of action on governmental administration? Drawing on governmental and legislative documents, court cases, journalistic articles, and interviews with key actors, the dissertation demonstrates that administrative morality has only partially met its framers' aspirations. The Colombian legislature adopted enabling legislation that provided a financial incentive to file lawsuits on administrative morality but then revised the law to reduce this incentive. The Colombian Council of State (the supreme court for administrative matters) has generally ruled against plaintiffs and with governmental defendants. Key agencies of public administration have developed no common interpretation of administrative morality and do not provide policy guidance, training, or oversight in order to comply with the norm. Media coverage initially fostered hope that the new norm would bring significant reforms, but as time passed the media have become less hopeful. Still, the dissertation also suggests that administrative morality has encouraged people to develop higher expectations of governmental performance

The Organization of American States’ Model Law on Simplified Corporations

Colombian Law 1258 of 2008 introduced the Simplified Corpo-ration (Sociedad por Acciones Simplificada or SAS). This type of business entity included modern corporate law features such as sim-plified incorporation proceedings, full-fledged limited liability for its shareholders, and broad freedom of contract for the definition of housekeeping and governance rules. It also reduced old-fashioned prohibitions pertaining to shareholders and managers activities and reduced transaction costs. The SAS’s “opt-in” approach also has allowed for private parties to draft the most suitable agreements. The enabling provisions of Law 1258 have been the starting point for the preparation of at least three Model Law proposals presented before the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Na-tions Commission for International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), and the Pacific Alliance. Discussions on these draft legislative models have been under-way over the last few years at different bodies within these multina-tional organizations. Although some progress has been made in rec-ognizing the importance of providing some degree of harmonization in the field of closely held business enterprises, particularly in de-veloping jurisdictions, there are still significant obstacles that need to be surpassed before such model law is adopted. In June, 2017 the OAS General Assembly recommended to the Organization’s mem-ber States to adopt the Interamerican Model Law on Simplified Cor-porations. It is the first successful attempt for the international har-monization on the rules concerning business corporations

Fighting Rebellion, Criminalizing Dissent: Governmental Responses to Political Criminality in Mexico and Colombia, 1870s - 1910s

Political Crimes represent one of the most neglected areas in the historical scholarship on modern Latin America. It is an enduring absence that, for decades, has prevented historians from developing richer understandings about the functioning of politics, the evolution of legal phenomena, and the workings of both war and peace in the region. This dissertation addresses this historiographical void trough a comparative study of governmental responses to political criminality in Mexico and Colombia between the 1870s and the 1910s –years that frame the rise and fall of the Mexican Porfiriato and the Colombian Regeneration. A study of political, legal, and social history, the dissertation explores and analyzes how governments in Mexico and Colombia understood and responded to political offenses such as treason, rebellion, and subversion. How legalistic were these responses? How respectful of the rule of law they were? What do these responses reveal about the logics of justice, state power and repression in late-nineteenth century Latin America? What do they tell about the relationships between state and citizens in the region? A wide collection of primary sources helps answer these questions. Sources include newspapers; memoires; collections of laws and decrees; legislative debates; legal essays; criminal expedients; judicial processes; and a diverse number of petitions for judicial protection and state leniency. Overall, the dissertation argues that governmental responses to political criminality entailed different yet complementary purposes. First, they aimed to protect public order from episodes of rebellion and insurrection. Second, they had the goal of neutralizing the activities of dangerous dissidents. Third, they allowed governments to trace and retrace the limits between legitimate and criminal expressions of political dissent. Political crimes were a fluid and mutable criminal category that allowed authorities to prevent and fight rebellion and maintain dissenters under strict control. Responses to political crimes involved both legal and extralegal strategies, and often redefined the limits of what laws and constitutions considered valid regarding the state’s actions against its own citizens. These redefinitions had different meanings and consequences in Mexico and Colombia, conditioning substantial differences in the legal and judicial experiences of political dissidents in each country

The Pitfalls Of At-Will And Just Cause Employment: A Comparartive Analysis Of Employment Law In The United States And Colombia

In March 2012, fourteen employees from a South Florida law firm were fired for simply wearing orange-colored shirts to work