This article accounts for the way proportionality principles havebeen executed in Colombia for the control of constitutionality of thestates of emergency, through the evaluation of six (6) special casesfrom 1991, four (4) of them related to internal states of exceptionand two (2) of them related to social emergency. A qualitativemethodology was used to describe the way the ConstitutionalCourt was applying the proportionality principle to analyze suchexceptions, accounting for an analysis matrix that describes thekey points of such principle, to wit: a) the existence of a specialcrisis and not of a structural damage to the states of exception; b)not suspension of human rights or basic freedom of people overwhich measures are imposed; c) not interruption of the normaloperation of the government branches; d) the exercise of powersexclusively to effectively face abnormalities; the strict relationshipbetween cause and abnormality and, in this sense, the direction ofdecrees only and exclusively to resolve the causes that give originto the state of exception; e) the length defined for the states ofexception (Cifuentes, 2002) to conclude that the ConstitutionalCourt, while applying the proportionality principle, has failed tomake an exhaustive judgment of the requirements incorporated;in this way, it has allowed a perpetuation of the executive powerand a government with no separation of powers.