Imperativos y alternatives de la reforma de la educación jurídica en America Latina

Abstract

SummaryRogelio Pérez Perdomo is a Professor of Law at the Central University of Venezuela and an active member of the Latin American Council of Law and Development. A longstanding student of the purposes and methods of legal education, he has also made a special point to acquire knowledge about legal education in Europe and the United States.In this article Professor Pérez Perdomo discusses the inadequacies and shortcomings of the existing legal education programs in Latin America. He recognizes the growing awareness of such inadequacies on the part of many Latin American law teachers, and their dissatisfaction with the traditional systems and methods of law teaching. This dissatisfaction has generated many studies and discussions in the different Latin American countries, and it has also produced some changes and improvements. Professor Pérez Perdomo believes, however, that such changes fall significantly short of modern needs of adequate legal education. Concentrating on the situation in Venezuela, he compares it with current legal education innovations and developments in other Latin American countries, as well as in the major European countries and the United States.Professor Pérez Perdomo clearly admits his preference for further reforms of the legal education methods and programs in Venezuela (and, presumably, in other countries of Latin America). He views, however, student unrests as an invalid reason for such reforms because improvements must emerge from substantive needs rather than the temporary considerations of political expediency. Reforms must proceed from an appreciation of the true role of law and the legal profession.In a brief survey of the traditional and modern role of the law, especially its use as a vehicle for social and economic development, Professor Pérez Perdomo demonstrates the significance of their impact on legal education. Equally important, in his opinion, is the influence of foreign financial aid, e.g., the Ford Foundation, the International Legal Center, etc., which must have had a considerable impact on the emergence of new legal education trends. The effect of such influences has not yet been evaluated, but it is an important topic in any study of the effectiveness and desirability of international transfers of educational methods from one country to another. Thus, the United States legal education model encountered many difficulties in Latin America when the attempt was made to apply it there, and it can be used there only in a limited sense and in a significantly modified form.Professor Pérez Perdomo notes the following trends of legal education reform in Latin America: 1)The reorganization and “semestization” of law courses.2)The use of new teaching methods–tutorials, class discussions, working groups, and legal clinics–by various law schools in their efforts to enrich the content of their educational programs.3)The identification of the purposes and responsibilities of legal education in coordination with the general aims of law and the legal system.Professor Pérez Perdomo recognizes that many of these aspirations for reform are seriously affected by such factual limitations as, for example, the unfavorable numerical ratio of students to law faculty, inadequate teaching abilities of the professors, poverty and the small size of libraries, and the encumbersome administrative organization and fiscal procedure of universities. Despite these difficulties, Professor Pérez Perdomo is confident that the reform efforts will prevail and that many salutory improvements will eventually become evident in Latin American legal education.