Apart from his professional practice to which he has been mainly dedicated since 1977 in consulting, litigation, and national and international arbitration in the areas of Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, and Civil and Commercial Law, he was the General Secretary and Vice-Minister of Communications, Delegate to the National Constitutional Assembly of 1991, Minister of National Defense, Ambassador of Colombia to the government of the United States, and Minister of Justice and Law.

He is a member of the Advisory Council of Cornell University Law School. Also, since 2001, he has been a full member of Academia Colombiana de Jurisprudencia/Colombian Academy of Jurisprudence of which he was a corresponding member from 1996. On 2 occasions (2004 and 2006), he has been ad hoc Judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a Co-Judge of the Council of State and the Constitutional Court, several sometimes.

Since 1986, he has been a member of the list of arbitrators of the Chamber of Commerce of Bogota, and since 1988, an international arbitrator of the International Chamber of Commerce of Paris (CCI). Between 2010 and 2011, he was the coordinator of the commission that prepared the bill, which together with the international arbitration bill became the Arbitration Statute (Law 1563 of 2012) of State and the Constitutional Court, regarding national arbitration.

He was the Dean of the Faculty of Legal Sciences at Universidad Javeriana, and for more than 40 years, he has been a professor of Administrative Law and Constitutional Law at that university. On several occasions, he has been an  Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, and Economic Law professor at Universidad Externado de Colombia, Universidad de Los Andes, and Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario.

He is a founding partner of Esguerra Asesores Jurídicos, now Esguerra JHR.