Ethics and legal education in Latin America

Juny Montoya Vargas and Carlos F. Morales de Setién Ravina

Chapter 14 in Research Handbook on Global Legal Education, 2026, pp 282-300 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In this chapter, Montoya and Morales de Setién examine the ethical dimension of the legal profession and its implications for legal education and curriculum design. Legal education often implicitly conveys the message that it isacceptable to pursue the profession based solely on personal interests—regardless of their content—rather than in service of justice and broader social aims. If society expects lawyers to uphold social values in their professional conduct, law schools must fundamentally rethink how they integrate ethics into legal education. Following a brief analysis of the theoretical debates concerning the relationship between ethics, law, and legal education, the chapter explores what is currently taught—and how it is taught—in Latin American law schools. Law schools, through their operative curriculum, often send a clear message: “law is one thing, morality is another,” a message that has a profound from the standpoint of justice systems and social justice goals. The chapter argues for the importance of adopting a “transversal” approach to ethics in legal education—one in which ethical instruction is integrated across the curriculum. This model aims to cultivate not only ethical knowledge but also the skills and dispositions necessary for ethical competence. The chapter closes with two significant initiatives that embody this approach: one at the University of Los Andes in Colombia, led by the Center for Applied Ethics (Centro de Ética Aplicada), and the other at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) Law School.

Keywords: Legal Ethics in Latin America; Transversal Ethics Across Curriculum; Law and Morality; Technical Training and Social Justice; Legal Education; Teaching Legal Ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781788117005
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