Elements of the State

• The presentation is about the elements of the state.
• Presented by Maria Del Pilar Osorio Gomez, Professor.
• Based on the book Constitutional Theory and Political Institutions of Maestro Vladimiro Naranjo Mesa.

Definition of the State

• The concept of the State refers to a social, political, and legally constituted conglomerate.
• It is settled on a determined territory.
• It is submitted to an authority that is exercised through its own bodies.
• It has authority (sovereignty) recognized by other States.

Elements of the State

• Population
• The concept of the State is a social, political, and legally constituted conglomerate.
• A human conglomerate constitutes the population of the State.
• The existence of a State requires a population.
• The population is the foundation of the State organization and its substrate.
• The population consists of individuals, rational beings with a life cycle, pursuing individual and collective goals.
• Population is a human and sociological element.
• It stems from the conglomerate's will to coexist in pursuit of collective and individual goals.

Solidarity of the Group

• Manifests from the first social organizations:
  • Family
  • Horde
  • Clan
  • Tribe
• The trend transitions to the city level, and in a more evolved state, to the province or country under a prince or lord.
• The sentiment focuses on the idea of Nation in modern times, sparking national sentiment.
• Modern population is conceived in the form of a Nation.

Society, Population, People and Nation

• Society has a broad connotation, representing the genre for many species.
• Includes any human conglomerate, regardless of its form, modality, extension, or development level.
• Can be defined as a meeting of men that lead a life in common.
• Society results from human nature, with man being a social being.
• Population also means a set of people within a specific framework: the State.
• The State population consists of all people within it, whether nationals, foreigners, residents, or transients.
• Population is defined by its common submission to the Constitution and laws of that State.
• The concept of people is more restricted.
• In constitutional law and political science, it signifies those with political rights who can participate in electing rulers.
• All those who make up the people of a State are its citizens.
• Specific legislative norms regulate the acquisition, loss, and recovery of citizenship.
• The concept of Nation is a type of human society with a high degree of sociological and historical evolution.
• It has common elements that generate a shared feeling of solidarity and destiny over time.

Evolution of Social Organizations

• First social organizations: the family.
• The first social organization conceived and imposed by human nature is the family.
• It is and will remain the cell of society.
• The family nucleus is the starting point for human society's constant, though slow, evolution since the appearance of homo sapiens on Earth.
• The father was considered the protector and highest authority in the family core.
• In matriarchies, this role belonged to the mother.
• The Laws of Manu established that "a woman, during childhood, depends on her father; during youth, on her husband; when her husband is dead, on her son; and in the absence of these, on her husband's relatives."
• The father was the supreme head of the home, judge, and priest, responsible for maintaining the cult of the tutelary gods.
• The horde was born in response to the need for protection against external enemies.
• Families grouped into unstructured hordes with promiscuity.
• The prevailing sentiment in the horde was shared defense and subsistence, relying on the physical strength or skill of the strongest.
• Hordes congregated around this element.
• Primitive nomadic social organization characterized by transient settlements constituted a horde form.
• This form lasted until the new social organization of the clan was established.
• The clan emerged after a long evolution in social habits and customs, driven by solidarity bred in the horde.
• This new form marked a shift from nomadic to sedentary lifestyles, where groups settled on and exploited a fixed territory permanently
• This marked the start of primitive agriculture.
• The clan, or gens latino, had a totem, a group progenitor, represented by animate or inanimate beings (animal or plant).
• The group took its name from the totem, vested in the clan leader.
• The tribe forms as clans evolve and new factors of solidarity are introduced.
• Tribal organizations exhibit a more defined and permanent nature.
• They settle on a territory, implementing a division of land and labor.
• The tribe had a more structured and hierarchical political organization with governing bodies and a stable military or warrior organization.
• Tribal social organizations ultimately led to the formation of cities and, later, the concept of the Nation.

Stages of Human Evolution

• Savagery (Inferior, Middle and Superior)
  • The inferior stage is the childhood of humankind.
  • Humans remained primarily in forests, living in trees for protection from wild animals.
  • Humans were powerless against nature.
  • They fed on fruits, berries, and roots, using nature but without exploiting it.
  • Articulated language was used, in a transition between pre-human and human nature.
  • It is the stage before homo sapiens, between one million and 900,000 years before sapiens.
  • The middle stage corresponds to the age of unpolished stone, or Paleolithic.
  • Humans began to leave the trees, becoming nomadic, more independent of climate, and spread across the earth.
  • They started using rough unpolished stone tools, mallets, and wooden spears for fishing and hunting.
  • They discovered fire through friction of stones or sticks, using it for cooking and keeping warm.
  • Man was anthropophagous at this stage.
  • The upper stage corresponds to the age of polished stone, called Neolithic.
  • It began with the invention of the bow, string, arrow, and axe, making hunting and fishing more rational.
  • Man largely dominated nature and became sedentary.
  • They began building houses of clay, stone, or wood and produced rudimentary means of subsistence, such as pottery.
  • Navigation began, with utilizing skins for clothing.
• Barbarism (Inferior, Middle and Superior)
  • The inferior stage of barbarism began with covering of ceramic or wooden vessels with clay to be more resistant to fire, leading to pottery and manual arts or crafts.
  • Domestication of animals and the discovery of agriculture were achieved.
  • The middle stage of barbarism corresponded to the systematization of pastoral and agricultural life.
  • Techniques for domesticating, raising, and feeding animals, as well as cultivating plants and cereals, were perfected.
  • Anthropophagy began to disappear as clans and tribes started emigrating and invading other populated territories leading to racial mixing.
  • The superior stage was the Iron Age, where humans founded iron ore and transformed tools for tillage and hunting, and manufactured more resistant arms.
  • This stage constituted a prelude to civilization, which began with writing invention.
• Civilization
  • It began with the invention of the animal-drawn plow, making large-scale systematic tillage possible and increasing agricultural production.
  • This led to clearing forests and converting them into farmland.
  • Population concentrated in urban centers, the humanity "urbanized" which enabled progress in art, technique, science, and politics.
  • Knowledge and discoveries spread.
  • These included the hand mill, bellows forge, spinning wheels, carts, ships made of planks and beams, oil and wine production, decorative items, textiles on looms, etc.
  • Architecture began for real at this stage.
  • The first cities in Sumeria, the Greeks of the heroic era, the Italic tribes before Rome's founding, Tacitus' Germans, the Vikings, etc., all appeared.

Who Are the Population?

• For legal purposes, the population of a State consists of all of its inhabitants, whether permanent or transient, national or foreign.
• Constitutions prescribe the obligation for inhabitants, whether domestic or foreign, to live by and obey the Constitution and laws of their respective State, plus its local authorities as stated in Article 4 of the CP.
• All are equally subject to the State's established legal order.
• Differences exist mainly regarding the rights enjoyed by each within the State.

Notion of Nationality

• The legal and political link relates a person to a given State.
• There are, in general, three systems to determine the nationality and which today are usually combined:
  • Jus sanguinis makes one national if they have their parents were from that country, even if the subject was born abroad.
    • Adopted by most European states, aiming to ensure that emigrants to other continents do not lose direct or indirect ties with their country of origin.
  • Jus soli determines nationality by birthplace.
    • In consequence, someone who was born in that territory is a national of the State, regardless of the nationality of their parents.
    • Initially adopted by most Latin American countries to increase population and colonize vast uninhabited areas.
  • Jus domicilii grants nationality by domicile or residence in a given State.
    • The constitutions generally adopt a mixed system.
    • This combined previous systems and is the case with the Colombian Constitution.

Who Are Nationals

• Generally, nationals of a country consist of all people born within its territory, or those who have applied for and obtained naturalization.
• Nationals by birth and nationals by adoption are the two classes.
• The Colombian Constitution distinguishes between natives of Colombia whose parents have also been Colombian nationals.
• Also those who, being foreigners, have taken up residence in the republic, and those children with a parent being Colombian who were born abroad and then take up residence in the country.
• All civilized countries now accept not only the nationality of origin that by adoption or acquired.
• Nationals by adoption generally enjoy the same rights as nationals by birth, except those expressly exempted by the Constitution.
• For the Colombian case, this includes being elected president, senator, high court magistrate, or other positions in the judicial branch.
• Civil are rights acquired by becoming a national- whether by birth or adoption- through the fulfillment of requirement of the Constitution, especially a minimum age. This enables a person to exercise political and civil rights.
• Those inhabitants of a country are considered aliens who lack the nationality of the State, being entitled to the same civil rights that nationals enjoy by default.
• Due to public order, these may be restricted.
• Foreigners have the same rights that nationals have with specific national and constitutional limits.
• In terms of political rights, foreigners are given the option through suffrage to participate in popular representation and to belong to those bodies performing public functions.
• Exceptionally, certain constitutions as of 1991, recognize resident aliens the right to participate as voters, selecting authorities at the municipal or local level.