Legal Education and the Formation of Elites

In nineteenth-century Hispanic America, the legal profession was the profession of power in both private and public spheres. This book describes this close association between legal expertise, elite formation and political power as a “legal mandarinate”. The work traces the development of legal education, the legal profession, and republican government in 19th-century Chile. It examines this educational process as a prerequisite for entering the legal profession during a post-colonial era of state-building, elite formation, and political struggle in the Global South. It focuses on continuities and transformations in legal knowledge, educational texts, teaching institutions, and the actors whose cooperation and conflict shaped them. The study tracks how legal education was highly sensitive to political contexts and dynamics, creating scenarios that either strengthened institutions or disrupted teaching efforts, sometimes leading to institutional closures or purges of students and professors. The book will interest academics and researchers in History of Legal Education, Comparative Law, Latin American History and Politics, and 18th-19th century Intellectual History.