Medidas de excepción previas a la justicia de transición en Colombia y sus efectos de legalidad penal: Periodo 1948-1962

This article aims to study the exceptional measures that affected criminal legality in the period from 1948 to 1962, which for many constitutes the starting point of the armed conflict in Colombia. Specifically, it is intended to analyze the legal formulas that have been exercised to mitigate the causes of violence, which sooner or later became subversion and then, at the confluence of various scenarios starring armed actors, represented the execution of special measures that affected the criminal legality, the system as such and the current constitutional order at that time. That is, the Penal Code system in force at the time (1936) and the Constitution of 1886. This article used the analytical hermeneutical method from Arthur Kaufmann’s vision, in which he considers four pillars of current law, namely: The historical element, necessary for describing the direct sources of the period under review and its measures; the logical element and the systematic element that reveals the validity of the law in force for the time; and, finally, the teleological element, which is pertinent to verify the elements that supported the exception measures, as well as its material content that can be considered today as harmful to judicial guarantees and that can generate the critical questions of the current system and its transition since the 1991 Constitution.