Os sentidos da inovação no ensino jurídico: a expansão do movimento de clínicas jurídicas no Brasil e na França.

Abstract

In the first decade of the 21st century, clinical legal education has reached global dimensions. This thesis addresses the process of international expansion and local implementation of legal clinics in two distinct scenarios: Brazil and France. Through interviews with professors from clinics of different nationalities, students, and members of non-governmental organizations, as well as through observation and participation in seminars, conferences, and activities related to clinical legal education, and analysis of bibliographic and documentary sources, this research aims to provide an ethnographic understanding of the connections between clinical legal education, innovation, practical-professional training, and the social role of universities in the process of incorporating legal clinics in Brazil and France. In the first part, the thesis describes the theoretical contributions - the political economy of legal knowledge and decolonial thinking - which provide the framework for interpreting the globalization of legal clinics. It identifies, based on the first set of empirical research data, the intellectual, political, and institutional choices that led to the emergence and implementation of legal clinics in both countries. In the second part, we address the aspects that enable or challenge the consolidation and global/local expansion of clinical legal education, based on the analysis of the second set of empirical research data. Establishing and understanding the similarities and differences between the two researched scenarios, Brazil and France, enabled us to: i) identify that the meanings of clinical legal education, central to pedagogical, professional, and social discussions within legal education, also reflect unequal power dynamics in local and global contexts, especially in the categorization of 'innovation' versus 'backwardness'; ii) identify and analyze how the internal and external conditions of the global expansion process of clinical legal education can contribute to fostering reflections and pedagogical proposals aimed at overcoming such asymmetries and 'decompartmentalizing' legal knowledge, guided by dialogue and mutual recognition.