Unconstitutional punishment: political authority and penal crises in Colombia

Ruiz Pérez, Valeria (2024) Unconstitutional punishment: political authority and penal crises in Colombia. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the tensions, contradictions, and conflicts behind declarations of unconstitutional states of affairs (massive, systematic, and generalised violations of fundamental rights) made by the Colombian Constitutional Court in the penal sphere. It offers a critical examination of the relationship between punishment and political authority in a context in which the constitutionalisation of penal policy, rather than restraining punitiveness, has bolstered penal inflation and justified the imposition of punishment under ‘unconstitutional’ conditions which amount to a ‘daily transgression of the constitutional order’. I argue that these declarations are premised on a paradoxical recognition of the extent to which the State’s claims of authority are undermined. Although punishment is understood as the embodiment of the State’s claims of authority, penal inflation and the excessive deployment of coercive force are symptomatic of weakened relations of obedience, allegiance, and authorisation between the State and the citizens. Therefore, the longer these declarations are sustained through time, particularly in the penal sphere, the more they amount to an official recognition of the actual absence of the Constitution’s normative order, as well as the lack of a solid material basis on which the political project can be realised. Turning from the local to the global, I situate these particular dynamics within broader trends, offering insights for the understanding of the conceptual relationship between punishment and authority in a variety of economic, social, and political contexts. On the one hand, penal inflation and expansion in different regions of the world indicate the relevance of the question of political authority. On the other, although declarations of unconstitutional states of affairs are not the rule around the world (perhaps with the exception of Latin America where they are becoming increasingly common), they are reflective of contradictions and tensions inherent to the broader category of systemic legal remedies, particularly where they seek to produce structural social transformations.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Valeria Ruiz Pérez
Library of Congress subject classification:	J Political Science > JC Political theory J Political Science > JL Political institutions (America except United States) K Law > K Law (General)
Sets:	Departments > Law
Supervisor:	Lacey, Nicola and Ramsay, Peter
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4753

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