Constitutional adjudication routinely works against the backdrop of the assumption of a functioning government. Courts dispose of individual cases by declaring a specific violation and issuing a specific remedy. They do not go beyond the individual case because, by design, the political branches – legislatures and executive branches – are supposed to protect, respect, and ensure basic rights in most cases that do not reach the courts.

However, this is not the case with massive and structural violations of rights. In peaceful times, massive violations of rights are usually not a product of malfeasance or bad faith; they are the result of precarious institutional capacity and dysfunctional policies, political processes, or systems of government. In other words, they are the consequence of specific instances of a lack of effective governance.

This chapter examines Justice Manuel José Cepeda’s role as a towering justice on the Colombian Constitutional Court, arguing that he represents a particular type of impactful judge, i.e., a political-legal institution-builder. His core attributes have been a fusion of jurisprudential pragmatism and political skill, which he used over time to increase the power of the institution. These attributes focused Cepeda on issues that were otherwise undeveloped in the Court’s jurisprudence. For example, he paid close attention to the design of remedies, and perhaps his greatest contribution to the Court’s work were the monitoring mechanisms that he developed for mega-interventions dealing with internally displaced persons and health. Moreover, he constructed interventions in ways that built up political support for the Court while dampening the opposition that normally accompanies activism. His fusion of political and legal skill in protecting and increasing judicial power is seen from the standpoint of his entire career: as a young lawyer involved in designing the Court through the 1991 Constitution, as a justice on the Court itself, and as an adviser and academic after his term ended.