El formalismo jurídico colombiano o cómo evitar la protección del interés público en el arbitraje público-privado
| Autor | José Manuel Alvarez Zárate |
| Cargo | Professor in International Economic Law, Externado University of Colombia and sole practitioner on trade and investment issues. |
| Páginas | 161-202 |
JOSÉ MANUEL ÁLVAREZ ZÁRATE*
Colombian legal formalism
or how to prevent the protection of public
interest in public-private arbitration**
El formalismo jurídico colombiano
o cómo evitar la protección del interés
público en el arbitraje público-privado
ABSTRACT
Arbitration in Colombia is based on an ancient stringent legal formalism
that has transplanted, transformed, and mixed, Spanish and Roman laws and
legacies with French exegesis. It has also been based on German jurispru-
dence. This paper describes how Colombian legal formalism has limited the
protection of public interests in arbitral proceedings as provided in the 1991
Colombian Constitution. It also shows how it has infused Administrative Law
and mainly Procedural Law over time, where formalism is more stringent,
and full of useless rhetorical technicalities. As a result, it has privileged the
private interest over the public one despite the Constitutional provision to
safeguard the public interest over private one. The protection of the public
interest is grandiloquently stated in the constitution and in administrative
law but with limited practical effect. Consequently, each phase in public-
private arbitration is lavishly regulated by an arbitral regime and several
sections of the procedure code, the administrative procedure code and the
public officials code, but none are effective at protecting the public interest.
Instead of protecting the public interest, all the regulations compiled under
the influence of the textualist legal culture, constitute barriers to achieving
it and thus administrative law leaves it unprotected.
* Professor in International Economic Law, Externado University of Colombia and sole
practitioner on trade and investment issues. I am very grateful to the assistants who worked in
my office and helped me with some research at different stages of the elaboration of this chap-
ter; Daniel García, Blanca Beltrán and Ana M. Gómez. All errors herein remain the author’s
own. Email: jose.alvarez@uexternado.edu.co ORCID ID: 0009-0002-3542-3233.
** Received on March 2nd, 2023, approved on July 4th, 2023.
To quote the article: Álvarez Zárate, J. M. Colombian legal formalism or how to prevent
the protection of public interest in public-private arbitration. In Revista Derecho del Estado,
Universidad Externado de Colombia. No. 57, September – December, 2023, 161-202.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18601/01229893.N57.07
Revista Derecho del Estado n.º 56, mayo - agosto de 2023, pp. 161-202
162 José Manuel Álvarez Zárate
Revista Derecho del Estado n.º 57, september-december 2023, pp. 161-202
KEYWORDS
Public-Private Arbitration, Investment Arbitration, Investment Law and Public
Interest, Policy Space In Arbitration, Procedural Formalism In Arbitration.
RESUMEN
El arbitraje en Colombia se basa en un antiguo formalismo legal estricto que
ha trasplantado, transformado y mezclado, legados legales españoles y roma-
nos con la exégesis francesa, y la jurisprudencia alemana de conceptos en su
sistema legal. Este artículo describe cómo el formalismo jurídico colombiano
ha limitado la protección del interés público en los procedimientos arbitrales,
tal y como se establece en la Constitución colombiana de 1991. También
mostrará cómo esto ha infundido el derecho administrativo y principalmente
el derecho procesal a través del tiempo, donde el formalismo es más estricto,
lleno de tecnicismos retóricos inútiles, lo que resulta en privilegiar el interés
privado sobre el público a pesar de la disposición constitucional para salva-
guardar el interés público sobre el privado. Afirmo también que la protección
del interés público se enuncia grandilocuentemente en la Constitución y en el
derecho administrativo, pero con un efecto práctico limitado. En consecuencia,
cada fase del arbitraje público-privado está profusamente regulada por un
régimen arbitral y varias secciones del código de procedimiento, el código
de procedimiento administrativo y el código de funcionarios públicos, pero
ninguno es eficaz para dar cuenta de la protección del interés público. En
lugar de proteger el interés público, todas esas reglamentaciones, compiladas
bajo la influencia de la cultura jurídica textualista, constituyen barreras para
su consecución, por lo que el derecho administrativo lo deja desprotegido.
PALABRAS CLAVE
Arbitraje público-privado, arbitraje de inversiones, derecho de inversiones e in-
terés público, espacio político en el arbitraje, formalismo procesal en el arbitraje.
SUMMARY
Introduction. 1. Arbitration as a formal private means to settle disputes.
1.1. Arbitration was designed to settle private disputes. 1.2. A procedural
law approach to arbitration. Formalism – textualism. 1.3. The emergence of
public-private arbitration. 2. The formal constitutional prevalence of public
interests in public-private arbitration. 2.1. Constitutionally tensioned concepts
for public-private interest protection. 2.2. Public Law’s limited tools to pro-
tect the public interest in public-private arbitration. 2.3. The formal limits of
public-private arbitration to protect public interests. 3. The naïve Colombian
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Colombian legal formalism or how to prevent the protection of public interest…
Revista Derecho del Estado n.º 57, september-december 2023, pp. 161-202
constitutional approach towards ISDS as governance. 3.1. The government
approach to ISDS as governance. 3.2. The constitutional interpretation of ISDS.
Conclusion. References.
INTRODUCTION
The importance of public-private arbitration is increasing in Colombian law
given the large amounts of capital involved in the exploitation of Colombia’s
natural resources and in infrastructure projects. This is demonstrated by the
many arbitration clauses that are included in a variety of administrative con-
tracts and International Investment Agreements (IIAs) negotiated and signed
in the first decade of the 21st century. Arbitration has thus become a recurrent
practice in infrastructure projects, and some of the biggest controversies be-
tween public and private entities are being removed from the judicial courts
and transferred to local or international arbitration. Therefore, the level of
justice provided by the State has been regressing to give way to local and
international private justice.
This chapter aims to describe what drives public-private arbitration in
Colombia and reveals the discrepancies between the constitutional purpose
to safeguard the public interest with the prevailing private interest perspec-
tive that has infused the practice in public-private arbitration over time. The
main thesis herein is that 19th century legal formalism still infuses Colombian
arbitration through procedural and administrative law, which are the sources
of public-private arbitration. Coupled with its private leaning perspective,
such formalism has helped to limit the constitutional guarantee to safeguard
the public interest in public-private arbitration. It has excluded the discussion
on the arbitral practice, that is to say, that legal formalism has not allowed
for the protection, in practice, of the public interest in today’s public-private
arbitration.
Section II describes how private initiative, party autonomy and free will
have driven arbitration since the 19th century in Colombia, and how arbitra-
tion was designed exclusively to settle disputes between private entities,
embedded in the frame of a formally ruled procedural framework. It examines
the continuities of legal textualism-formalism deeply rooted in Colombian
procedural law, which impregnated the arbitration reforms in 1989 and 2015.
Finally it describes the public-private arbitration emergence process pursued
under public law reforms rooted within the afore mentioned continuities. It
concludes by noting that the inertia of legal formalism and the private interest
approach of arbitration has infused public-private arbitration through time.
When preparing contracts with private entities, the State is considered a private
actor that can settle contractual disputes with private entities on the same
level, without special consideration to its public nature. Subsequently, despite
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