The professional law training in Brazil, human fundamental rights and the persistence of liberal bacharelism: A reading from the book "os aprendizes do poder" (the apprentices of power) by sérgio adorno

Recent analyses show that the legal education in Brazil is still based almost exclusively on a traditional model, which emerged with the creation of law courses in the second half of the nineteenth century. This model is clearly technical and it is possible to identify a highly formalistic and depoliticized legal culture, whose political paradigm is the liberalism and scientific paradigm is still the legal positivism. If such model was the best to serve the Brazilian liberalism of the Second Empire and Old Republic, it doesn't fit anymore. Since the second half of the twentieth century and especially after the enactment of the Federal Constitution of 1988 became current the demand for material realization of human fundamental rights, which the traditional model of legal education is unable to satisfy. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the different elements that make this traditional model of legal education, the presence of such elements and the functions that they currently play on non-promotion or on promotion of human fundamental rights. Among these elements, one stands out: the liberal bacharelism. This can be defined as the central cultural element of Brazilian law and that is the result, according to Antônio Carlos Wolkmer, of the intersection between legal formalism and political individualism. The book "Os aprendizes do poder" (the apprentices of power) by the brazilian sociologist Sérgio Adorno can provide a safe path to understand the emergence of liberal bacharelism and the permanence of it in the current legal education, as well the restrictions to the effectiveness of human fundamental rights that it carries, mainly the persistent characteristics of legal professionals steeped in legalistic formalism and empty rhetoric, besides the ever present uncritical importation of principles and theories from alien legal systems, especially from European law.