O ensino do Direito no Brasil e os limites e contradições na atuação do advogado público.

Abstract

Literature has been showing that the teaching of Law hás been going through a big crisis, due mainly to the proliferation of low-quality courses and Law schools and the exhaustion of the epistemologic paradigm based on juridical positivism, which is the basis of the dogmatic teaching method used in Law courses. On the other hand, the practice as an attorney in a federal university has allowed the author to notice that the practice of a civil lawyer is marked by a large attachment to the law, as the only formula used to solve the juridical problems submitted to their appraisal. Thus, from a materialistic-historical approach, mainly taking into account the labor social division which characterizes the capitalist system, the author analyses the crisis of Law instruction in Brazil, especially the process of expansion of the logic of the market over education, as well as the characteristics of the practice of a civil lawyer. Aiming at this, he uses data on the number of Law schools, courses, enrollments and Bachelors of Law; tests and results of the exam to which the bachelors are submitted; pronouncements and actions of the Brazilian Lawyers Order (OAB) on the results of the exam and the creation of new Law schools and courses; civil servant exams to become a civil lawyer; verdicts produced by federal attorneys who work in a federal university; and on the organizational and bureaucratic structures of the Advocacia-Geral da União. The analysis of the data shows that the growth of Law courses responds to a market expansion logic which leads to transformations of the instruction and the bachelors into merchandises which will be part of the reserve army of law professions, waiting for an opportunity which the market cannot fulfill. The OAB exam works as a mechanism of control of this market reserve for the lawyers who have already gotten their professional register and that feel threatened by the large number of bachelors who graduate every year. The transformation of instruction and bachelors into merchandise goes with the division of intellectual work and the dogmatic teaching method which stems from it, since it requires low investment and offers the future bachelor a role of simply reproducing the dominant ideology and the legal system which symbolizes it. The content analysis of the OAB exams and the civil services exams for federal attorneys shows that the multiple choice questions favor the questions based on the law, or in the best of cases, jurisprudence and doctrine. The configuration of the federal attorney career and the bureaucratic mechanisms of control of their activities, especially the creation of the Procuradoria-Geral Federal and the publishing of verdicts, norms and other bureaucratic measures by higher instances are used to discipline the practice and establish a real intellectual hierarchy which restricts the role of the lawyers to reproducing the dominant ideology represented by the legal system. The analysis of verdicts produced by federal attorneys confirms that these professionals stick to the law and, in a smaller degree, appeal to jurisprudence and doctrine as a basis for solving problems. Therefore, the process of preparing a Bachelor in Laws in a dogmatic approach, which begins with the classes in Law school and deepens with the need of passing the OAB exam and civil service exams to become civil attorneys, consolidates in a practice marked by the bureaucratic control and the attachment to the law as the only interpretation model, with no room for a critical view of Law which could contribute to making real justice, the biggest mission of a lawyer.