Democracy, Sovereignty and Constitution: Structural Limits to Democracy inColombian Constitutional Jurisprudence

Abstract

This article analyzes the way in which the Colombian Constitutional Court has constructed structural limits on democracy based on the 1991 Constitution. The central hypothesis argues that constitutional review does not deny popular sovereignty; rather, it juridifies, channels, and subjects it to procedural guarantees, fundamental rights, and institutional principles that prevent its transformation into unlimited majoritarian power. The research adopts a qualitative approach of a documentary and jurisprudential nature. The corpus of analysis is composed consists of constitutional decisions selected for their direct relationship with democracy, their institutional impact, and their capacity to represent different stages in the evolution of the Court. The category of transitionality is used as an interpretive framework to understand the transition from a formally participatory democracy toward a constitutional democracy subject to material, procedural, and deliberative limits. The study concludes that the Court has performed an ambivalent role: on the one hand, as an agent of democratic expansion and, on the other, as a restraining body against reforms, legislative decisions, or institutional practices that may affect political equality, public deliberation, citizen participation, or the basic structure of the social rule of law.