The book FGV Law School Rio de Janeiro: Molding reality to create the future reviews the background when FGV founded Rio Law School and its 17 years of development and expounds in detail on FGV Rio Law School’s talent training concept, teaching practices, and plan of academic development, to provide different ideas and paths for developing Brazilian legal education.
Founded in 1944, Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) is headquartered in Rio de Janeiro as the most prominent think tank in Latin America. In the past 20 years, FGV Rio Law School has developed rapidly, rising from the 90th to the 1st in Brazilian legal education ranking. FGV Rio Law School has always been among the best regarding the discipline ranking in Brazil and the results obtained in the judicial examination. It ranks 3rd in the “comprehensive list of world top think tanks” in 2020 in the Global Think Tank Report recently released by the University of Pennsylvania.
FGV Rio Law School makes innovations in legal education and legal research in terms of legal teaching mode, which can be summarized as follows: building an unconventional curriculum system; adopting diversified teaching methods; emphasizing the integration of globalization; emphasizing empirical research, and paying attention to social reality; reflecting the humanistic care for teachers, students, and staff; strengthening the connection between the theoretical knowledge of higher education and the ability to solve practical problems.
FGV Rio Law School is committed to promoting the output of academic knowledge, cultivating students’ critical thinking and ability to solve practical problems in different knowledge segments, opening up new fields of legal research, and cultivating global professional legal talents with international awareness. In addition, FGV Rio Law School has set up a China Research Center to study legal issues affecting the development of relations between Brazil and China.
The book FGV Rio Law School: thinking about the present to build the future collects first-hand information from all aspects. Most of the content comes from the responses to the dialogues, interviews, and views of the Faculty of FGV Rio Law School, which provides the first-person perspective for readers to understand the school and study its teaching and development deeply. The publication of this book will take the school running practices of FGV Rio Law School as the paradigm, provide experience reference for improving the quality of law teaching and courses in Brazil, and contribute to promoting the development of legal education in Brazil.