Join us on our first Spring session of the 2011/2012 Janey Annual Workshop.

Nicolas Figueroa and Gema Santamaria will be presenting their most recent work, based on the 2011/2012 Janey Summer Fellowship they were awarded.

Nicolas Figueroa’s paper is entitled The Constituent Power, in the Hands of Judges, The Supreme Court and Constitutional Change in Colombia

Abstract:

The concept of the Constituent Power has been traditionally used to make sense of highly complex moments of political change. This concept denotes a manifestation of raw power by an abstract political body identified as the the people, that is outside legal control and that is seen to legitimize the establishment of a political order. This concept is thus central to democratic theory. However, within constitutional democracies, the concept of the Constituent Power can be interpreted in a different way. Attention to the last 50 years of Colombian constitutional history shows how legal practitioners can appropriate this concept, mainly judges, to exert some control over processes of constitutional change. In the case of Colombia, the Supreme Court has made use of this concept in different ways and with different results, sometimes preventing constitutional change and some other times allowing it, a situation that brought strong criticisms towards the Court. This paper attempts to make sense of the way the Colombian Supreme Court made use of this concept from 1957 until 1990, giving special attention to the significance of this problem during the constitution-making process that led to the Constitution of 1991. Also, a brief commentary will be made regarding the way the recently created Constitutional Court has incorporated this concept to its decisions. Hopefully, this exercise will prove helpful in understanding how courts and judges take part in very complex processes of political change and the implications that such participations have for democratic theory.

Gema Santamaria’s paper is entitled Lynchings in Twentieth-Century Mexico: Punishment, Violence, and the Community

Abstract

This paper will argue that lynchings are embedded in local historical trajectories that involve deep social and political meanings; in particular, lynchings denote ongoing conflicts and tensions within socially, politically and ideologically heterogeneous communities. In the Mexican context, these conflicts have been historically grounded on questions regarding landholding regimes, religious practices and believes, and political disputes. The paper will provide an overview of the presence of lynching violence in contemporary Latin America as well as of the current literature on the topic, followed by a historical interpretation of lynching violence as a means to resolve intra-community conflicts.

All sessions are free and open to the New School community.