An analysis of interpretation and construction of the right to life in colombian constitutional jurisprudence

Abstract

The way the Colombian Constitutional Court has interpreted the text of legislation that recognizes the right to life and how rules on the general problem of abortion have been developed are analyzed in this article. According to this assessment, the rights associated with the problem of abortion in Colombia have been created and developed as constructions of the Constitutional Court and, in doing so, the extent of the obligations pertaining to these construed rights have been confused. The first part of the article offers an explanation of the distinction between interpretation and construction, and outlines the interpretative theses on the right to life upheld by the Constitutional Court when deciding the constitutionality of criminalizing abortion. The rules that have been constructed are identified as well. In the last part, the rules of the Court are reconstructed on the basis of Hohfeld operators.