Legal Education in the Western World: A Cultural and Comparative History

Legal Education in the Western World provides an encompassing history of legal education from Ancient Rome to present day Europe and the Americas. Legal education is considered the locus of the formation of professional culture, and in this book Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo contributes to our understanding of its formation by paying attention to how legal knowledge is conceived, the way it is created and transmitted, and the social status of masters, professors, teachers, apprentices and students. He focuses on historical periods and societies that have influenced the current state of legal education. While these are established touchpoints used by historians and supported by a vast bibliographies in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, this book also includes material often overlooked by historians.

Ultimately, this concise and accessible history presents a panoramic view that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of approaches to legal education in different societies, and an examination of the shared idea of law manifested in them. This historical and comparative perspective will be useful to comparative legal scholars and legal historians interested in a more informed general approach to improving legal education.

Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo is Professor of Law and former Law Dean at Universidad Metropolitana, Caracas, and frequent visiting professor at Stanford Law School. He is the co-author of The Civil Law Tradition, 4th edition (Stanford University Press, 2018).