Advanced Diploma in Critical Legal Thought

• Class 1: The crisis of restructuring the form of the State
  Teacher: Carlos Rivera Lugo
  
  This class will address the topic of the State as a historically determined social form. As a political form, the State is a derivative of the capitalist socioeconomic formation. Under this system, political economy is not limited to the strictly economic but also constitutes a constellation of social relations of production and exchange, as well as legal and power relations, fundamentally underpinned by other social forms such as commodities and value. In this context, one cannot speak of democracy in the abstract but rather of the democracy of capital. The class will also address the issue of the so-called relative autonomy of the State, as well as the class struggle that manifests itself within it amidst the current tendency of capital to become the State and more openly impose its class dictatorship. The crisis of the liberal State and the rise of the authoritarian State, characterized by some as fascist or neo-fascist, will be examined in this regard. However, it will be emphasized that the State is also a field of struggle given the growing fissures in the power relations contested within it. This is also reflected in the growing conflict in relations between states, a situation that has now led to an increasingly widespread state of war. Furthermore, the historical experience of the socialist state as a transitional social form will be addressed. Finally, the Marxist thesis on the non-state will be discussed; that is, the historical necessity of overcoming the fetishism of the state form and promoting its withering away through the progressive socialization of governance for the construction of a new society and the establishment of a communal democracy.
  
  
• Class 2: The crisis of the capitalist state in Latin America and the Caribbean
  Teacher: Beatriz Rajland
  
  Current issues related to the State will be discussed, with a particular focus on the State in Latin America and the Caribbean. As established in the previous class, the capitalist State is a product of capital as a social relation, and itself a specific social relation, which is the practical exercise of domination, as well as of the resistance and struggle against it. The Gramscian concept of relative autonomy, which ultimately "succumbs" to the interests of the dominant class, will be explored. In Latin America and the Caribbean, it is necessary to draw upon its own original sources, its own social makeup. Nation-states whose governments attempt any process of profound change or that could affect the interests of big capital are harassed and/or blocked. This situation is used by some progressive governments to justify their self-limitation and their pragmatic approach. The crisis of political sovereignty in this context will be addressed.
  On the other hand, the option of confronting capital through broad popular participation will be addressed. Here, the contradictions inherent in the Latin American progressive conception of the state will emerge. Emphasis will be placed on the need to build alternatives, to cultivate subjectivities willing to take structural, not merely discursive, measures. The crisis of liberal democracy and the current trends of strengthening right-wing and far-right movements, as well as their effects on the legal system, will also be examined. In this regard, the debate surrounding the characterization of these latter movements as fascist or neo-fascist will be explored. The challenge is to ask ourselves and analyze why and how this situation has arisen. To this end, we will draw upon the analysis of concrete experiences. The topic of the transitional state will also be explored.
  
  
• Class 3: Towards the communalization of the state political form: the communal state and the deepening of participatory and protagonistic democracy in Venezuela
  Teacher: Sonia Boueiri Bassil
  
  In Latin America and the Caribbean, revolutionary transformation processes have taken place that must be studied through the lens of social and power relations, characterized by transitions and/or the progressive extinction of state political forms. The Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela (CRBV), approved in 1999 and driven by the Bolivarian Revolution, was the first and only constitution in its history to be the product of an intense participatory legal and political process, which imbued it with a strong sense of belonging and legitimacy. Approved with 72% of the vote, it has now been in effect for 26 years.
  In its maturation, with the strengthening of People's Power based on the principles of participatory and protagonistic democracy, this historical project has as its horizon the construction of the Communal State (CS), leaving behind the old, liberal model of the State. According to the Organic Law of Communes, the CS is the “form of political and social organization, founded on the democratic and social State of law and justice established in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (CRBV), in which power is exercised directly by the people, through communal self-governments, with an economic model of social ownership and endogenous and sustainable development, which allows for the achievement of the supreme social happiness of Venezuelans in socialist society. The fundamental cell of the CS is the Commune.”
  This evolution involved testing organizational structures within the framework of Participatory Public Management to refine the conditions for direct participation in the exercise of power. The principle of self-government, the structure of the Communal Parliament, and the proposal for Communal Justice are also integral to the Commune and the foundations of the new society and economy to be built.
  Analyzing this political and legal evolution leading up to "the construction of a new state," and the new reality that emerged after the US intervention and the kidnapping of the constitutional president on January 3, 2026, will be the objective of the class.

• Class 4: The problematic condition of law in the present
  Teacher: Carlos Rivera Lugo
  
  This course aims to offer a materialist and strategic conception of law in capitalist society, in which law is neither born of law itself nor explained, interpreted, or applied solely from the text of its normative statements. Contrary to the idealist conception of law—an abstract law reduced to a formal norm divorced from its historical and social context—this course will address law as a social form that, on the one hand, is derived from capital and, on the other, also serves to order the social and power relations required for its reproduction. It begins with an understanding of the intimate relationship between fact and law: law as the formal recognition of facts and acts with normative force.
  In recent times, we have witnessed the increasingly exposed attempts to subsume the legal system entirely under the interests and dictates of capital. This has plunged the legal system into crisis, revealing its fictions and abstractions. We have moved from the bourgeois state of law to a de facto or state of exception.
  Thus, the increasing indeterminacy experienced by legal norms leads to their growing inability to serve in the effective and concrete mediation of conflicts, and instead, they have been openly supplanted by the efficacy of facts and acts of force as the criterion of validity. Hence the renewed debate surrounding legal form. This includes the growing identification and appreciation of other societal processes of normative prescription and social regulation that are not due to the forms and logics of capitalist domination, also known as non-law. Finally, the specific conditions that the historical process of transition and progressive extinction of legal form as the predominant mode of social regulation must assume, and the empowerment of a new non-legal and communizing mode of regulation as a new normative horizon, will be examined.
  
  
• Class 5: Legal production in the context of accumulation by dispossession: privatization of public law and legal structures of dispossession
  Teacher: Aleida Hernández Cervantes
  
  The purpose of this class is to offer an analytical and critical overview of the production of regulations resulting from the processes of economic globalization, especially those related to the current phase of capitalism (accumulation by dispossession).
  The normative plurality of our times has new producers of law, among which are international financial organizations, transnational lobbies and organizations that dispute the meaning and content of current legal regulation.
  These are material sources of law that have emerged from processes of accumulation by dispossession, which center on the privatization of the public and the commons. This has led to substantial changes in the relationship between the public and private spheres; it is possible to speak of a public-private partnership, the privatization of public law, and legal structures of dispossession, to mention just a few of the legal manifestations of these changes.
  From a critical legal perspective, we are obliged to account for the characterization of these new transnational legal productions of a neoconservative nature, as well as the consequences they generate for the existence and full exercise of social, collective and natural rights.
  Finally, the current crisis posed by the geostrategic restructuring of the global economy and politics will be addressed. This restructuring has led to what some characterize as the end of the neoliberal globalization of past decades and a return to the economic nationalism of the past, particularly led by the United States. In this context, the discussion will explore whether we are facing processes of deglobalization, reglobalization, and/or a multilateral world economy, and what the implications of these changes might be.
  
  
• Class 6: Insurgent Law and Popular Movements
  Teacher: Freddy Ordoñez
  
  The relationship between law and popular movements can be analyzed through the lens of insurgency, as a mediating category, from the perspective of a structural critique of capitalist social relations and from the specific position of the Latin American periphery and dependency within the colonial/modern world system. For this approach, critical legal thought offers several avenues and bridges for overcoming the law, or even for its forceful critique. Similarly, it is through the continuity of work from Marxism and the praxis of popular movements, from the intersection of insurgency and law, that practices of popular legal counsel can be developed, practices that transcend colonial perspectives and legal impositions on the legal practices of the Global North. This session seeks to address Brazilian Marxist law and insurgent law as a possibility for the political use of law, understood as tactical use, with the ultimate goal of a strategy of disuse, through insurgent legal practices.

• Class 7: The crisis of the international legal order in the current period of geostrategic transition
  Teacher: Carlos Rivera Lugo
  
  The profound crisis currently facing international law is caught between a problem of effectiveness—the lack of compliance with norms and principles—and a structural problem, where the very design of the system, from its origins, has historically operated as an instrument of domination by the great powers, and more recently, particularly the United States. This reality has fostered the emergence of a “law of the strongest,” a kind of latent or implicit law, in which normative legality ultimately yields to the effective exercise of power and the impunity of hegemonic actors, revealing a “disabling” of bodies such as the UN, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
  This moment places us in a geostrategic transition where international law is reduced to a reality shaped by power relations rather than by abstract and formal norms. The United States, with the backing of the Security Council, has even created a Peace Council, initially composed of autocratic rulers and chaired for life by President Donald Trump. It is suspected that this is the embryo of what could become the institution that will replace the UN and govern the world autocratically. This has also been the basis of the neoconservative discourse in favor of a new world order based on rules.
  In response, some defend existing international law and the UN, albeit with some reforms, while others, especially from the Global South, demand a critical refounding of the world legal order, including its institutional framework, to enable the denunciation of the illegality of brute force and seek to rescue humanity's collective capacity to do justice beyond the mere recognition of completed acts of force.
  
  
• Class 8: Genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity
  Teacher: Luis Lorenzo Córdova Arellano
  
  While genocide requires a special intent (dolus specialis) of physical or biological destruction of a group, ethnic cleansing seeks expulsion to achieve territorial homogeneity and is not an autonomous crime, but is prosecuted as a war crime or crime against humanity.
  Crimes against humanity consist of systematic attacks against civilian populations without requiring proof of intent to exterminate the group as such.
  To understand the current crisis more deeply, we must consider the work of Francesca Albanese (UN Special Rapporteur), who has denounced the illegality of the prolonged occupation of Palestine as a structure that facilitates the commission of these crimes. Although the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered provisional measures to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza and halt the offensive in Rafah, international bodies suffer from a structural incapacity to ensure that their resolutions have practical consequences.
  The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes against humanity - such as the starvation of civilians - but has not been able to enforce them, reflecting the breakdown of the global order, with the "law of force" prevailing.
  The rule of law ultimately yields to the effectiveness of power, rendering international justice an "incapacitated" apparatus in the face of the impunity enjoyed by powerful nations. Are we witnessing the death of these norms and the emergence of a new legal order?
  
  
• Class 9: The situation of human rights today in Our America
  Teacher: Alejandro Rosillo
  
  This paper will analyze the diverse discourses on human rights that have developed in Latin America as ideological moments of political praxis. Based on this analysis, it will examine the reality being shaped by different actors in the region through their use of human rights discourse, and analyze how international and national institutions, as well as legal instruments, operate within these processes. It will also address the problems posed by the rightward shift or far-right movement that has occurred in several Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as the current climate of war imposed by the United States in our region.

• Class 10: The case of Venezuela: The imperial siege of national sovereignty; sovereignty as a field of struggle in the face of the rupture of international legality
  Teacher: Luis Damiani Bustillos
  

  Today, the case of Venezuela epitomizes the principal contradiction facing Latin America and the Caribbean: the reactivation of the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine is being revived as a strategic framework for regional control. National sovereignty is thus called into question due to the inability of the international legal order to enforce it. This is not only happening with sovereignty in our region but also, for example, in Europe, where the United States is forcing European countries to cede sovereignty so that it can continue to provide the defensive umbrella necessary to guarantee its security. In exchange, Washington demands that Denmark sell or cede Greenland.
  Political and legal sovereignty—within the framework of international relations or international law—is insufficient if effective control over our resources and raw materials cannot be exercised. Equally important is popular sovereignty, that is, sovereignty that originates from the people. Both national sovereignty and popular sovereignty are, in this sense, a matter of force. This sovereignty also holds the power to freely decide on our present and future, including the determination to undertake a transition process toward 21st-century socialism that combines the nationalization or socialization of resources, a planned economy and a regulated market, integration into emerging geostrategic blocs, and the development of communal forms of governance.
  Venezuela suffered a brutal siege of its national sovereignty by the United States from the presidency of Barack Obama, who initially declared the Bolivarian Revolution a threat to U.S. national security. From that moment on, it was subjected to a series of international coercive measures, including coup attempts and assassination plots. Finally, on January 3, 2026, the United States militarily intervened in the country with the purpose of illegally seizing [the Venezuelan government].

• Class 11: Cuba: US war, humanitarian aid and socio-economic “collapse”
  Teacher: Mylai Burgos Matamoros
  
  Since Donald Trump's arrival to the presidency of the United States, during his two terms, the intensification of the economic and commercial embargo against the island has had devastating consequences for the Cuban economy and society. Among the hundreds of measures taken, the most impactful have been, in his first term, the inclusion of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism; and in his second, in 2026, following the invasion of Venezuela, an executive order decreeing the blockade of oil supplies to the island.
  In addition to the above, Cuba suffers from serious infrastructure problems across all economic and social sectors, stemming from thirty years of socioeconomic crises since the collapse of the socialist bloc in the 90s, culminating in the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when the island shut down all economic and commercial activity to protect its population. It is now argued that Cuba is experiencing an unprecedented state of polycrisis.
  The objective of this class is to analyze the current situation of the island, both internally and externally, from a political and economic perspective related to the legal framework, taking into account the nature of the war that Washington is waging against Cuba; the illegality and extraterritorial nature of all the actions that this country has historically taken and continues to take against the island; the ineffectiveness of International Law, which for over thirty years has condemned these actions with no greater effect than the moral condemnation of the aggressor; the political and legal strategy of humanitarian aid that some countries are implementing to overcome the blockade; and the international solidarity that has been objectively deployed in favor of the sovereign self-determination of the Cuban people.
  
  
• Class 12: Panel discussion: Is international law dead?
  Teachers: Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein, Carlos Rivera Lugo, Luis L. Córdova Arellano and César Pérez Lizasuain
  
  The old is dying, and the new is struggling to be born. Are we already in the midst of a new world war, with Latin America and the Caribbean as a new battlefront? What does this mean for our region? What might lie beyond in terms of a new multipolar international legal order, or can we expect a new order that redefines the balance of power in terms of new poles or spheres of influence? A peace of the grave?

• Class 13: Politics, state and law in Mexico: transformations and limits of the 4T
  Teachers: Aleida Hernández Cervantes and Mylai Burgos Matamoros  
  

  Mexico is in the second phase of the Fourth Transformation (4T), which began in 2018 with the rise to power of the anti-neoliberal left-wing Morena party. Following eight years of social and economic progress, the country is promoting industrialization to strengthen its structural base, maintain an economy with social impact, and reduce dependence on the United States, amidst the geopolitical crisis of the North American hegemon. Within this framework, differentiated security policies are being implemented to combat organized crime violence inherited from neoliberalism.
  In this context, political and legal transformations are underway. The judicial reform, already operational, is beginning to show changes: it fosters dialogue with communities and social groups, civil society, and even economic actors; it prioritizes a justice system that is close to the citizenry, humanistic, multicultural, and digital, with an emphasis on issues of legal pluralism, socio-environmental issues, gender, labor rights, and the preponderance of the public sector over large private powers; and it operates with austerity, reducing its budget by 1000 billion pesos this year.
  A far-reaching electoral reform is being discussed and will be approved in the coming months with proposals such as: cost reduction through restructuring of electoral bodies, less funding for parties, reduction of legislators in chambers, elimination of proportional representation, direct election of INE councilors and magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal, and electronic voting.
  The entire socioeconomic movement of the Fourth Transformation (4T) emphasizes the welfare state, but transformations are impacting the political and legal system. This class aims to analyze this process in relation to the depth and real results of these changes, their limitations and inertia with respect to political and legal structures, within the current geoeconomic and political context.

• Class 14: The legal and political aspects between fascism and neo-fascism: The current advance of the right and the far right
  Teacher: Albert Noguera 
  
  The class treats neofascism not as a political anomaly or cultural regression, but as a historical form of legal and political reorganization of contemporary capitalism. Against political and cultural interpretations that explain the rise of the far right in terms of Caesarism, institutional crises, or identity politics, it argues that these readings reproduce the liberal separation between economics and politics and are insufficient for understanding the phenomenon.
  Based on the notion of capitalist social totality, understood as a contradictory unity in which the accumulation regime and the legal-political mode of regulation are co-determined, fascism and neo-fascism are interpreted as concrete forms of the State, emerging in contexts of structural crisis of capitalism, when the accumulation mechanisms based on the market no longer guarantee growth and legitimacy.
  Neoliberalism constituted an initial attempt to realign the globalized, financialized, and digitized accumulation regime with the state structures inherited from postwar social constitutionalism. However, this realignment failed to achieve lasting growth or political pacification. As a result, a second, authoritarian realignment emerged, characterized by a coercive repoliticization of accumulation.
  In this process, law occupies a central place. The authoritarian transformation does not occur outside the legal order, but rather through it. Autocratization operates on a visible level, through the voluntarist use of law (states of exception, penal reforms, erosion of guarantees), and on a structural level, through a fragmented and seemingly technical normativity that reconfigures social relations (securitization, immigration control, digital surveillance, militarization). Neofascism does not entail the suspension of law, but rather its authoritarian reconfiguration as the central mechanism for governing the structural crisis of capitalism.
  
  
• Class 15: Argentina: A paradigmatic case in the advance of the far right
  Teachers: Beatriz Rajland and Marcelo Andrés Maisonnave
  
  The rise of the far right will be addressed from an international and particularly regional perspective, starting with the US offensive in Latin America and the Caribbean, which prioritizes the protection of its domestic market and the corresponding opening of the region's markets to its exports of goods and services and to extractive investments from that source in key and strategic areas.
  The Argentine government has chosen a policy of total alignment and submission to the US in all areas. President Javier Milei is aiming to establish himself as a global leader of the far right, serving Donald Trump's interests like his best student.
  This class will present and analyze the political rise and proposals of Javier Milei, who in 2018 founded his party, "La Libertad Avanza" (Freedom Advances), which describes itself as "libertarian anarcho-capitalist." His presidential term will be examined to understand and discuss his political project, which is being emulated by other figures on the far right in Latin America and the Caribbean. Milei represents capitalism in its current stage of brutal offensive by capital against labor, and particularly by US interests within the framework of the renewed Monroe Doctrine.
  Milei presented his proposals and unpopular adjustments as disruptive, the destruction of essential state functions in health, education, public works, environment, human rights and social security; he promotes a labor reform that sets back workers' rights by a hundred years, and tax reforms that only benefit the richest sector of the population.
  However, he was legitimized by popular vote in 2023 and 2025, aided by the constant allocations of money provided by the IMF and the US Treasury, which extorted the people with the threat of chaos if Milei did not triumph.
  How did this situation come about, and how can we get out of it?

You must be registered in the CLACSO Single Registration System (SUIC) and enter your username and password. If you are not registered, click here. hereTo access the registration form, you must click the "Register" button on the webpage of the Diploma you are interested in.

Upon completion of the registration process, you will receive a confirmation in your email.

Classes will begin in August and will conclude in December 2026.

All registered participants will receive, on the first day of activities, the necessary instructions to access the classes, bibliography, and discussion forums through the CLACSO Virtual Training Space.

Accessing and navigating the Virtual Learning Environment is very simple and user-friendly. In any case, a technical and academic support team will always be available. For inquiries, you can write to [email protected] 

 You must write an email with the request to [email protected] We will send you the requested certificate as soon as possible.

Exceptional criteria: In exceptional cases and within the first 20 days of starting the Higher Diploma, the student may write to [email protected] Requesting withdrawal and stating the reasons. After the case is evaluated, a response will be sent to the request. If approved, the student may resume the Higher Diploma program if a new cohort is offered the following year. After that period of time has elapsed since the start of the course, no requests will be accepted.

Money paid will only be refunded in cases where the organizing institutions decide to cancel the activity. 

Yes, the advanced diploma is certified by CLACSO. The diploma will be sent digitally and is completely free of charge.

Payment can be made in one installment, by credit card or bank transfer. We also offer the option of paying in 3 installments.

Yes. There will be discounts for students belonging to CLACSO Member Centers and CLACSO Associated Centers, for CLACSO Associate Researchers, and for all those who pay within the discount period.

You can check if you belong to a member center here: 

https://www.clacso.org/institucional/centros-asociados/

The Advanced Diploma program integrates a dynamic of asynchronous and synchronous classes. Classes are primarily asynchronous. The schedule for synchronous sessions will be communicated by the Diploma coordinator at the beginning of the program, and participation in these sessions is not a prerequisite for passing the program.