The principal objective of the Eugenio Maria de Hostos School of Law is the integrated formation of jurists who have a humanistic and social perspective of their role in the community. The intent is that they intervene actively in the regulatory, political and economic processes, at the regional as well as the national level. The social relevance of our legal profession in today's Puerto Rico is dependent on our ability to transcend the adversative, economic and technical viewpoints that have dominated the profession in our times.
It is critical that jurists be formed as learned professionals, true analytical intellectuals and social engineers, dedicated to the active cultivation of knowledge and practices needed for a more just and efficient administration of justice, for the formulation of public policy on the island, and for the competitive intervention in the new global economic, judicial-political and cultural order. Complete understanding of the social, political and valuative nature of law is essential, and of the primary social function that jurists serve as social conflict mediators, as counselors of the prescriptive processes in society, and, together with other groups of professionals, as organizers of social processes. Thus they can contribute constructively to the development of our country and to the solution of problems that afflict our society.
Moreover, the traditional model of legal education creates a learning process that by and large concentrates on the transmission of information. It has, likewise, a pernicious tendency to favor the courtroom as the almost exclusive stage for professional practice and within this forum, to favor adversative and litigious solutions, despite enormous costs that it entails, both economically and socially.
Hence the imperative to promote an educational model based on the human and professional development of the student through a formative process that focuses on critical, analytic and systemic thinking.
