Editor's letter

This edition of DIREITO GV Law Journal publishes one dossier on legal education and another on the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF), in addition to texts on law and development, migration, gender inequality and the binding force of the preamble of statutes.

This is the first time this journal manages to publish so many articles on legal education on the same number. Previous issues (vol. 2, n. 2, 2006) have already published reflections on this theme, which is of permanent interest for this magazine and - hopefully - for the legal academia at large. It is our belief that law schools should pursue the dualist challenge of training technically competent professionals and, at the same time, generating critical reflections on Law.

The tension between two conceptions of Law - the instrumentalist and the critical - is constitutive to the thinking on legal education. To opt for one of these two poles would produce either one of two equally undesirable legal professionals: the soldiers willing to serve any lord, or the (supposedly) critical lawyer who is clueless about law's practical workings. With the risk of carrying our argument too far, we dare say that the world needs neither of them.

All texts gathered here deal with issues such as legal practice, teaching methods and the characteristics of legal education in France. I thank the authors of the five texts, Denise Pires Fincato (RS); Horácio Wanderlei Rodrigues (SC); Michel Miaille (France) and Fernando de Castro Fontainha (MG); Carlos Alberto de Salles, Daniela Monteiro Gabbay, Erica Silva Barbosa, Fernanda Tartuce, Luis Fernando Guerrero, Marco Antonio Lorencini (SP); Virgílio Afonso da Silva and Daniel Wei Liang Wang (SP) for contributing to this journal.

The role of the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) is a theme frequently present in this journal, especially in the volumes "The future of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 "(vol. 4, n. 2) and "The Jurisprudence of STF under discussion" (vol. 5, n. 1). The role of the STF and of other Brazilian higher courts is increasingly been considered central to our country's future. Given the economic, political and social importance of the judiciary, cases heard by higher courts have been extensively debated by the public sphere. Therefore, this issue is also of permanent interest to this journal.

The four texts devoted to the abovementioned subject were written by Julia Maurmann Ximenes (DF); Erica Magami Yamada (USA) and Luiz Fernando Villares (RJ); Vera Karam de Chueiri(PR) and Miguel G. Godoy (PR) and deal with issues such as citizenship, the relationship between sovereignty and constitutionalism and the Raposa Serra do Sol case.

This number of DIREITO GV Law Journal also publishes five articles on various topics, as mentioned earlier by this Letter. Some of them have occupied the pages of previous volumes. Law and Development was an important theme on volume 3, number 2 and on volume 5, number 1. The regulation of problems with global impact (such as migration) was the subject of a dossier on our last number (vol. 5. n. 2).

Finally I would like to thank Brian Tamanaha (USA); Mario Gomes Schapiro (SP); Liliana Lyra Jubilut (MG) and Silvia Menicucci. O. S. Apolinário (DF); Daniel Viana Teixeira (CE); Paulo de Barros Carvalho (SP); Laura Coutinho (SP); e Orlando Villas Bôas Filho (SP) for their interest in our journal.

Enjoy your reading!

The Editor

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  15 Dec 2010
• Date of issue
  June 2010