Reforming Legal Education in Brazil: From the Ceped Experiment to the Law Schools at the Getulio Vargas Foundation

Abstract:     
n the 1960s a group of Brazilian legal educators dissatisfied with the state of legal education in their country sought support from the Ford Foundation and USAID for a project designed to spur reform. They created the Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas no Ensino do Direito (Ceped) and developed an innovative course in economic law. The project was initially successful but the course only lasted seven years: the project effectively came to and end in 1973 and the reform effort faltered. Thirty years later Brazil's prestigious Fundac Getulio Vargas (FGV) created new law schools in Rio and Sao Paulo: these schools looked back to Ceped for inspiration. The essay, written for an informal history of Ceped, reflects on this 40 year experience. It asks why Ceped failed to overcome the barriers to reform it faced in the 1970s and shows how, because of changed conditions in Brazil, FGV overcame them in the 21st century. The essay argues that democratization, liberalization, privatization, the globalization of knowledge, and a boom in corporate legal practice helped make the successful FGV experiment possible.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 11

Keywords: Legal Education, Brazil, Law and Development

JEL Classification: K2, K000

Accepted Paper Series