Critical legal education and reform of the justice system

an analysis of the “Law Students for justice and Democracy” campaign promoted by the National Federation of Law Students (FENED) in 2022

Abstract

This article sought to analyze the role of the National Federation of Law Students, through the campaign carried out during 2022 entitled “Law Students for Justice and Democracy” in the dispute for students' conscience. To this end, we briefly contextualize the Brazilian political scenario and present an account of the campaign and its guidelines and, finally, we use a critical theoretical framework to address the issue of the dispute over conscience in legal education, with a critical and emancipatory bias. Therefore, it was a qualitative research, which took the form of theoretical research. In the end, we verified that any proposal that aims at transformation needs to consider the impact that future jurists can cause in Brazil, Latin America and the world, since, as we observe nowadays, they are the ones who perpetuate, through institutional structures, violent practices. However, it is through these young people that we can foster emancipatory critical thinking and change this logic of cruelty.