Critical thinking inside law schools: An outline

Abstract

The intention of this work is to do the mapping of the many problems that critical thinking (CT) is confronted with in the inside of law schools, taking these in their institutional role as well as tangible manifestations of legal culture. I address the significance of CT, reflecting on its philosophical origins and its possibility in our time, a time that is marked by a crisis of paradigms. We will move from theory to a more pragmatic approach based on skills, only to find different sets of difficulties. Today’s higher education institutional learning tradition is characterised by the conception and implementation of reforms which, in turn, are dominated by notions of business and commercial ethics, that are adding up to the positivist predominance that is still reigning upon legal education.