Las circulares como soft law administrativo en Colombia; evolución y perspectivas.

Abstract

The new social and economic dynamics reveal to administrative law the need to broaden its vision and facilitate the implementation of new legal figures so that the guarantees erected in the constitution and the law in favor of citizens are materialized in practice, instead of give priority to legal certainty or conservation of traditional and important concepts of law, such as administrative acts. Because of this, administrative soft law has reached the legal system to become a new way of interpreting and applying public law; represents an evolution in the conception of the administrative act, is a manifestation of the constitutionalization of administrative law and is built as a useful practice in the exercise of the obligations of public entities and individuals when they interrelate. Circulars are one of the main legal instruments of administrative soft law and have been understood as legal acts of the administration or manifestation of the administrative function by the jurisprudence of the Council of State, and not properly as administrative acts, which does not prevent so that they are susceptible to control by the contentious-administrative jurisdiction, since, for the protection of the rights of the population, no action of the administration can be without control. This document is the result of a qualitative and descriptive investigative methodological process, based on the study of multiple doctrinal and jurisprudential bibliographical sources, in order to highlight from the academy the importance of administrative soft law and circulars; given its actuality and projection. This text is made up of three parts: general concepts of administrative soft law in Colombia, main forms of administrative soft law in Colombia, and circulars such as administrative soft law in Colombia. This document does not seek to exhaust the study of the manifestations of soft law in administrative law or of the circulars, it is a contribution to the literature on these issues, which is not abundant in Colombia, and represents the exhortation to go to various areas of law to strengthen the forms of legal interpretation of cases in which the expressions of will of the public administration are involved, in order to strengthen the limits to state power. It is important to offer legal operators, the academy and especially public servants, research and studies on the legal instruments that have emerged and that have opened a space in the daily public activities, as is the case with soft administrative law and in particular with circulars; which initially have been proposals for interpretation and deepening of the law, but which have the potential due to the issues it deals with and their own characteristics, to influence and be included in legislative and jurisprudential development. It is essential that the legal literature on circulars and administrative soft law be strengthened to improve the functioning of entities in the different services that they must provide to citizens by constitutional and legal order.