Let Your Kingdom Come: Justice as an Absent Driving Force in Legal Education

Abstract

This paper proposes an approach to justice as a driving force which moves people towards rectitude, balance and harmony. The hybris is presented as the opposite force, one that animates the subject towards perversion, domination and discord. Drawing on that perspective, we describe diverse aspects of legal education that elicit the hybris. Particularly, we argue that, through hidden curriculum channels, legal education fuels perversion, domination and discord within the inner world of law students. This effort seeks to contribute to legal education’s critical studies by providing a framework through which criticisms —usually unarticulated— on this matter can be integrated around the idea of justice as a driving force. Furthermore, it presents issues and experiences that are usually not recognized as problematic in the reflections about legal education. Finally, this is a highly relevant effort given the current social context in Peru, where the practice of law —both private and public— is going through a serious ethical crisis. This demands law schools to ask themselves, with genuine self-critical attitude, which role they are playing in this crisis.

Keywords

• Enseñanza del derecho
• mitología
• historia de las religiones
• justicia
• teoría crítica del derecho
• currículo oculto