Calificación de las faltas disciplinarias: dificultades en la determinación de su gravedad o levedad por el operador disciplinario

The General Disciplinary Code in Colombia classifies offenses as extremely serious, serious, and minor. While extremely serious offenses are explicitly defined, the law establishes criteria to distinguish between serious and minor offenses, granting the disciplinary authority a broad margin of discretion. This, combined with the use of indeterminate legal concepts, creates a practical problem: What should be a task of interpretation often becomes a subjective decision by the authority, capable of undermining the principles of legality and legal certainty. This paper proposes that the legal criteria be transformed into a list that specifies which ones may be used as aggravating or mitigating factors in the classification of offenses