Decision C-027/93. Concordat

Decision  C-027/93. Concordat

A group of citizens, exercising their right to promote public actions of unconstitutionality, demanded the Concordat between the Republic of Colombia and the Holly See, and the law that approved it (Ley 20 de 1974), alleging: (i) that there were procedural defects during the formation of the law on Congress, (ii) that it is detrimental to the ideological, politic and religious pluralism, (iii) that it affects the autonomy of the State, (iv) that it disregards the right of ethnic groups and indigenous to be formed in respect ant the development of their own cultural identity, among other charges.

The Plenary of the Court, after analyzing its competence to study the constitutionality of public treaties and their approbatory laws, the idea of national sovereignty in a context of cultural and economic interconnection, the constitutional ways of reinforcement of the participation on the process of axiological internalization, the difference between principles and values, the international norms that form the ius cogens, the scope of the integral and material control of constitutionality, the coincidence between values and principles of the international law and the domestic legal system regarding the protection of human rights, declared the constitutionality of the articles I, II, III, IV, V, VII, X,  XVIII, XXI, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVII, XXVIII,  XXIX,  XXX, XXXI y XXXII. Of the Concordat, and unconstitutional the articles VI, IX, XI, XII, XIII, XVI, XVII, XX y XXII.