Transnational Legal Networks and the Reshaping of Legal Education in Latin America

Abstract

Abstract This chapter assesses a unique transnational legal network called “Seminario en Latinoamérica de Teoría Constitucional y Política” (Latin American Seminar on Constitutional and Political Theory), also known as SELA, which brings together legal scholars from Latin America’s most important law schools and one of the United States’ most prestigious centers of legal education, Yale Law School. Due to a number of features analyzed in the chapter, the author argues that SELA represents one of the most consequential networks contributing to global legal education in Latin America in the last twenty-five years. In fact, throughout this period, SELA has managed—in a persistent and gradual way—to contribute to reshaping Latin America’s legal academy, as well as to propagate the values of liberal legalism in the region. Furthermore, its capacity to adapt to changing global and regional circumstances and, in particular, its ability to absorb new paradigms and methodological perspectives, has ensured its survival for a quarter of a century. Finally, the chapter emphasizes the fact that transnational networks of legal academics from the North and the South such as SELA represent sites that do not just play the ostensible role of serving as meeting points where scholars discuss their research, but, in the case of young legal academics from the Global South, these networks allow them to share their plight with colleagues similarly situated, something which, in turn, provides them with strategies and support in their struggle for recognition and academic consolidation in their home countries.