Towards the academization of law faculties in Chile? A theoretical and comparative analysis of the conflict of the professions

Abstract

Chilean law faculties are undergoing a process of change that consists in the proliferation within them of full-time academics. This involves a certain loss of importance within them of instructors that split their time between courts and classrooms. Are we witnessing the professionalization of legal instruction? This essay suggests understanding this phenomenon rather as a case of conflict between two professions, the 'academics' and the 'litigant teachers', within the faculties. To understand the possible outcome of this 'conflict of the professions', this essay proposes to pay attention to the academic practices of the United States, whose law faculties went through this process of academization at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries.