La refrendación popular en Colombia no es tan popular

The Constitutional Court in judgment C-699 of 2016 defined the term popular endorsement separating from what in the debate of approval the Congress gave to understand with this one. The present text examines the reasons for the Court to depart, relating it to Realism in the consideration of aspects beyond the law that affected the decision, to Neoconstitutionalism in which the decision made corresponds to the idea of an axiological constitution that prioritizes principles and Rights and to Paternalism in which the possibility of the people to decide was limited and this power was attributed to others. These three categories of analysis are chosen because they share the feature of allowing the creation of law by the judges and give some clues of the motivations of the Court to define popular endorsement as she did. Nevertheless, it was impossible to find legal support for this definition.