SELA 2015 to Be Held in Brazil June 11–14

Scholars and lawyers from North and South America will gather in Rio de Janeiro on June 11–14, 2015, for the Seminario en Latinoamérica de Teoría Constitucional y Política—The Seminar in Latin America on Constitutional and Political Theory (SELA).

This year’s seminar is centered around the topic of inequality. Panels will be held on issues such as equal access to resources, inequality and criminal sanctions, and unequal consequences of violent conflict.

Luis Roberto Barroso ’89 LLM, a justice on Brazil’s Supreme Court, will lead the special session devoted to the state of democracy in the host country. Jedediah Purdy ’01, Robinson O. Everett Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law, will give a keynote address on “Why Does Inequality Matter for Democracy?”

SELA is an annual seminar that brings together scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Perú, Puerto Rico, Spain, and the United States to present papers on a specific theme and discuss them in a series of panel discussions. The papers are written in English and Spanish or Portuguese and published in a Spanish-language book following the discussions.

Inaugurated in August 1995, SELA was created to help deepen the understanding of complex theoretical issues, to model a more discussion-oriented form of intellectual discourse than is the norm in Latin America, and to create a venue for the formation of a professional community. Now an intellectual center of gravity in the region, the seminar provides leading researchers from across the Americas opportunities to learn from and collaborate with other experts who share their commitment to democratic principles and values.