A Half Century Later : A Look Back at Changes in Brazilian and American Legal Education
| Autor | Henry J. Steiner |
| Páginas | 298-317 |
A HALF CENTURY LATER:
A LOOK BACK AT CHANGES
IN BRAZILIAN AND
AMERICAN LEGAL EDUCATION
HENRY J. STEINER
A HALF CENTURY LATER • 299
Research on the Teaching of Law (Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas no Ensino
de Direito -- CEPED). After preliminary trips to Rio de Janeiro, I spent 18
months as a consultant to the Ford Foundation at the Getulio Vargas Foun-
dation (Fundacao Getulio Vargas – FGV) where CEPED was based. Those
were exciting and memorable months, blending the beauty of Rio and the
charm of its life with the high intellectual adventure that CEPED offered.
CEPED was effectively an independent educational institution run by its
worked collaboratively with an exceptionally talented and determined group
institution’s purposes. The immediate purpose involved employing experi-
mental methods of teaching and novel courses to instruct a modest num-
ber of recent law graduates in corporate and economic law. (I use the term
“methods” broadly, to extend beyond teaching techniques to the spirit and
purpose of the classroom, and to the related construction of courses.) The
year-long course had a practical character, training its students to act ef-
fectively as lawyers in a country that was experiencing impressive economic
growth and becoming ever more complex and sophisticated in its economic
life. The long-term and more daunting goal looked to CEPED to serve as a
To some extent, the CEPED classroom that departed vividly from the in-
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tures of American legal education of the period. For example, classes became
more active and participatory. Students who had studied assigned readings
before class could go beyond simply absorbing what the professor said. They
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sor and each other. This fresh spirit animating the teaching became know
within CEPED and the later literature as ensino ativo (active teaching), or o
metodo novo (the new method).
It was obviously useful to bring to the faculty a knowledgeable Ameri-
can who could explain and apply the American approach. My education and
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