The Truth About Conceptions of Law in Latin American Legal Education

Scholars who criticise Latin America legal education point out that students are exposed to a formalistic and neutral conception of law and argue that such a conception is problematic and wrong. Despite the argumentative merits of that assessment, critics do not focus on a crucial issue: the difficulties faced by law students and law professors in reflecting on the question of the conceptions of law. In this chapter, we suggest that these difficulties are related to the way in which students and professors construct the truth about themselves as lawyers. In that sense, it is a question about one’s own professional identity and meaning, which might generate anguish and uncomfortable dilemmas in the construction of the career path. Therefore, we suggest that critics have to recognise that the question about the conceptions of law not only operates on an intellectual level, but also connects to the animic dimension of the professional self. Drawing from Foucault’s framework, in connection with philosophical and psychoanalytical insights, we seek to amplify our understanding of the difficulties and barriers faced by law students and professors when faced with the question of the conceptions of law.