Was born in Manizales, Colombia, in 1959.

He received his law degree in Colombia in 1982 and his master's degree in political science from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium).

He returned to Colombia in 1985 and was a professor in the philosophy of law at the Bolivariana University (Medellin).

In 1988 he returned to Belgium in order to start a PhD in sociology.

In 1993, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Louvain-la Neuve with a thesis, "The Symbolic Efficacy of Law".

In 1992 he worked as a clerk at the Constitutional Court in Colombia.

In 1994 he became Director of the Institute for Legal Research at the Los Andes University in Bogota.

Recently, Professor Villegas (with Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos) completed research about justice in Colombia, the results of which have been published in a two volumes book titled "El caleidoscopio de las Justicias en Colombia".

In 2001 he was visiting professor at the Law School of the University of Grenoble (France).

Currently he is a professor of the Universidad Nacional in Bogota Colombia and also Honorary Fellow of the Institute For legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.