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UC Irvine Journal of International, Transnational, and Comparative Law

Abstract

This Article discusses the challenges for structuring a more

cosmopolitan legal education in the global South without falling in the

traps of legal colonialism, academic solipsism and social elitism. It does so

by examining the experience of FGV Direito SP, an attempt to create a

global Law school in Brazil. The Article suggests that understanding the

broad implications of a project for radically changing legal teaching in

Brazil requires a nuanced reading of the encounter between the purportedly

unstoppable force of globalization and the supposedly immovable object of

traditional legal institutions.

This Article is organized in four sections. The first discusses how

globalization and the return to democratic rule of law have created the need

for a new model of legal education in Brazil. The second discusses the legal

culture framework within which the new school appeared. The third

overviews the main lines of FGV Direito SP global-oriented legal

education. The fourth section presents the hurdles to offering a globaloriented

legal education in an emerging country overwhelmed by deep and

persistent social inequality and frames FGV’s experience within the

context of the ethical and political challenges for legal education in the

global South.

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