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This chapter examines water supply regulation in Colombia. It begins with an overview of the political and institutional landscape in Colombia. It then explores the emergence of water supply as a global issue and explains the central traits of global water governance (GWG). Next, it considers the specific mechanisms through which GWG is implemented in Colombia, factoring in the notion of the ‘constitutional regulatory state’, where the mindset of efficiency-based regulation is balanced by a human rights discourse, represented in this country by the Constitutional Court. Finally, two specific instances of the practice of the constitutional regulatory state are explored. First, the Constitutional Court's interpretation of ‘efficiency’ is used to analyse the role of the regulatory mindset in the Court' s reasoning. Second, the debate on the human right to water is used to explore the impact of neoconstitutionalism on the regulator.

This chapter seeks to explain why the impact of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights varies greatly across the different Latin American countries under its jurisdiction. Three case studies suggest that the uneven spread of constitutional ideas and practices across Latin America helps shape the type of authority the IACtHR exerts. In Colombia, where neoconstitutionalist lawyers were able to successfully ally themselves with reformers and participate in the construction of a new constitution and court starting in 1991, the Court now enjoys narrow, intermediate, and extensive authority. In Chile, where constitutional reform was muted, and neoconstitutionalist doctrines have not found strong adherents in the judiciary, the IACtHR has achieved narrow authority and, at times, intermediate authority. In Venezuela, neoconstitutionalism was sidelined as the new Bolivarian constitutional order was forged. Meanwhile, the Mexican case study suggests that the neoconstitutionalist movement can also work transnationally.

This chapter argues that any sensible answer to the question of the role of explicit moral reasoning in adjudication must take into account a broad set of institutional facts. Whether the court aiming to ‘enforce values’ is the ECJ or whether it is a domestic constitutional court is an important distinction for many reasons, and this chapter attempts to explore these reasons and argue for their relevance. It first maintains that the current debate on the role of moral reasoning in adjudication is related to a set of institutional processes. The chapter then distinguishes two positions in the debate on the role of moral reasoning in adjudication: ‘normative legal positivism’ and ‘neoconstitutionalism’. Finally, this chapter clarifies some methodological and substantive consequences which can be drawn from the nexus that binds together the choice of interpretive method with the greater or lesser trust we have in the interpreter.