María Victoria Calle Correa (born 8 May 1959) is a Magistrate of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, serving since April 2009.
Prior to her nomination, she worked in Previsora Seguros S.A., and insurance provider, since 2004, and was its vice president of legal affairs since 2005.
[1] She was elected to replace Magistrate Manuel José Cepeda Espinosa by the Senate from a ternary submitted by President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, receiving 76 of the votes over her fellow nominees, Zayda del Carmen Barrero de Noguera and José Fernando Torres.
[2] The nomination and subsequent election process, as well as that of her fellow magistrate Jorge Pretelt Chlajub which occurred at the same time, were criticised by Elección Visible, an election watchdog organization, for lack of transparency and the clear existence of back-door deals that permitted their election to have been secured from the beginning, and thus ignoring the ternary nomination process in which three compelling candidates are nominated and the Senate elects the best option; in their respective cases, each ternary list was composed of the favourite candidate and two lesser choices.
[3] This lack of seriousness in the process was coupled in the media with the perception that President Uribe broke tradition by nominating candidates who were neither constitutional scholars, respected professors in academia, nor held a PhD—in marked contrast to their predecessors in the Court.