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This article arises in the development of the research project named "Legal Reasoning in the Colombian High Courts" within the line of constitutional and society justice of the group of studies of Public Law under the direction of Professor Lina Marcela Escobar Martínez, PhD, in which the researchers are: Germán A. González Herrera, Vicente F. Benítez Rojas, Tomás Bustamante Bohórquez, Juan David Solorza Martínez, Julián Daniel González Escallón, and Mario E. Vargas Gutiérrez. It is a review article that shows some advances as for the theoretical frame and its application to the concrete case of the judgments of the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice; thus definite results from the theoretical and practical point of view are not presented here; the research began in January of 2007 and is sought to be finished in 2008 and has been financed by Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. The article is divided into four main parts: the first one is dedicated to outline the imaginary of the judge and the judiciary; the second one shows the results found in the judgments of the Supreme court as for interpretation and argumentation; the third one explains the judicial ethics, while the last one confronts reality with the text of the norm, taking as an example a few cassation judgments in the Civil Law room of the Supreme Court. It is important to highlight that the complete research deals with an analysis of the judgments given by three rooms of cassation (civil, penal and labor) between 2002 and 2006; however, for practical effects, in this article we only exemplify civil cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the result of the theoretical framework creation process about the project "The modulation of the Colombian council judgments" that has been carried out by the "Studies group on public law" within the research line called "Constitutional justice and society" in Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Thus the reader will find in this writing a general characterization on the legal modulation about the different modalities the interpretative decisions in countries that Alemany, Zurich, Italy and France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the second result of the research project titled "The Modulation of Judgments by the Colombian Council " that has been carried out by the "Studies group on public law" within the research line called "Constitutional justice and society" at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. The project has been accomplished in cooperation with students Carolina Porras, Daniel Guillermo Carillo, Santiago Ochoa, María José Romero y Juan Pablo Sarmiento, whom with their effort, commitment, and creativity improved the initial arguments of this project and forced us to think in new hypothesis, learning and unlearning our conceptions about law. This article reflects the ideas and analysis about modulation of the Colombian state council judgments, which is a practice that has not been explicitly recognized but has existed since long ago. In its first part, the article tries to locate the state council as a part of the judiciary under the 1886 Constitution, as well as under the actual Constitution. In the second part, it shows the judicial activities carried out by the state council; judgment modulation and the way this tribunal has quoted and used its judgments and the ones of other Colombian high courts are studied in this part. For this article, an exhaustive search of constitutionality judgments issued by the state council between 1945 and 2005 was necessary. The abstract of these judgments are in the files of the Studies group on public law. and only the relevant abstracts have been transcribed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]