Colombia

Abstract This chapter traces the long-standing relationship between the international legal order and socio-legal, economic, and political arrangements in Colombia, from the colonial to the Republican period, to the present day. Grounded on Legal Consciousness Theory (LCT) and a material approach to history, the chapter demonstrates that international law—or more specifically, the international legal project—has never been foreign or alien to the country’s everyday life. International normative ideas on civility, diplomatic relations, borders, or rights have been mutually constituted with local developments and imaginaries in Colombia, across issues ranging from competing paradigms of state-building to access to contraception and legal abortion. The vibrancy of present international legal scholarship in Colombia reflects this dynamic and complex relationship between the international and the domestic, which the 1991 Constitution further brought to the surface.