The Unstoppable Force, the Immovable Object: Challenges for Structuring a Cosmopolitan Legal Education in Brazil

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