Legislative acts and review of the Colombian Constitutional Court in the peace process

Legislative Act 01 of 2016, known as fast track, introduced a special legislative procedure for peace in the Colombian Constitution with the aim of speeding up and guaranteeing the legal implementation of the Final Agreement to End the Armed Conflict and Build a Stable and Lasting Peace. This procedure was used to undertake five constitutional reforms in relation to which the Constitutional Court undertook a single, automatic and exceptional control of their constitutionality. This dogmatic research, using a qualitative approach and secondary sources, analyses the formal, substantial and competence requirements that the Constitutional Court reviewed with these reforms in order to show, in this particular case, how it was possible to safeguard constitutional democracy and, specifically, the principle of the separation of powers and horizontal controls between the branches of the public power, which is a guarantee of constitutional states. In a methodological manner, we present the points which formed part of the Agreement and the legislative acts based on which they were introduced, and then we analyse the drawbacks of the legislative process and the aspects revised by the Court. Finally, we conclude that the exceptional alteration of the constitutional rules for the review of constitutional reforms was necessary not only for the legal implementation of the political agreements but also to safeguard constitutional democracy.