About SELA
The Seminario en Latinoamérica de Teoría Constitucional y Política – the Seminar in Latin America on Constitutional and Political Theory, or SELA, as it has come to be known by its Spanish acronym - is an annual academic gathering which brings together scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, and the United States. A specific theme is determined for each seminar. Papers are presented and subsequently discussed among the participants.
Inaugurated in August 1995, SELA has been concerned with both substance and process. Its founders agreed that it should seek to deepen understanding of complex theoretical issues, model a more discussion-oriented form of intellectual discourse than is the norm in Latin America, and create a venue for the formation of a professional community. SELA reaches out to the current generation of scholars and public intellectuals. That first summer, roughly fifty participants gathered in Chile to discuss the role of the state in protecting public morality. The following year, when SELA reconvened in Argentina, eighty-six people explored the responsibility of citizens and the accountability of officials in a constitutional democracy. Since then the roster of participants has steadily expanded to include over one hundred representatives from countries throughout Latin America, the Caribbean basin, Europe, and the United States (including a substantial number of Law School faculty members). Subsequent topics have ranged from democracy and the market (1997), to equality (1998), violence (2003), and executive power (2006).
Each SELA has also come to include a session called “Democracy in the Americas,” a roundtable discussion focusing on a current issue of pressing public importance (the conduct of the Fujimori regime in Peru, for example, or General Pinochet’s extradition proceedings). Not surprisingly, the ensuing debates are both spirited and deeply serious.
In just a few years, SELA has become an intellectual center of gravity in Latin America. What was once a gathering of individuals with diverse interests and agendas has, in the words of one participant, “taken on the flavor of a family reunion.” Other participants tend to echo one another as they reach for words to describe what the seminar has come to mean to them. They speak of developing a common language over time, one that allows for the communal exploration of new graphic ideas across geographic, disciplinary, and ideological boundaries. “Now we write, discuss, and hear each other in a different way,” says Martín Böhmer ’90 LLM and JSD candidate. “We share a common definition of a winning argument, of a quality paper or presentation, of a fruitful discussion,” he adds.
Participants speak, too, of “a rich intellectual space” where their community can renew and extend itself. For many, it is perhaps the only space where they can come together with scholars from different countries and institutions to work in a common enterprise.
SELA’s success is the result of enormous joint efforts by the following sponsoring institutions: Universidad de Palermo, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Universidad Adolfo Ibanez, Universidad de Chile, Universidad Diego Portales, Universidad de los Andes, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, Instituto Paraguayo de Derecho Constitucional, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Inaugurated in August 1995, SELA has been concerned with both substance and process. Its founders agreed that it should seek to deepen understanding of complex theoretical issues, model a more discussion-oriented form of intellectual discourse than is the norm in Latin America, and create a venue for the formation of a professional community. SELA reaches out to the current generation of scholars and public intellectuals. That first summer, roughly fifty participants gathered in Chile to discuss the role of the state in protecting public morality. The following year, when SELA reconvened in Argentina, eighty-six people explored the responsibility of citizens and the accountability of officials in a constitutional democracy. Since then the roster of participants has steadily expanded to include over one hundred representatives from countries throughout Latin America, the Caribbean basin, Europe, and the United States (including a substantial number of Law School faculty members). Subsequent topics have ranged from democracy and the market (1997), to equality (1998), violence (2003), and executive power (2006).
Each SELA has also come to include a session called “Democracy in the Americas,” a roundtable discussion focusing on a current issue of pressing public importance (the conduct of the Fujimori regime in Peru, for example, or General Pinochet’s extradition proceedings). Not surprisingly, the ensuing debates are both spirited and deeply serious.
In just a few years, SELA has become an intellectual center of gravity in Latin America. What was once a gathering of individuals with diverse interests and agendas has, in the words of one participant, “taken on the flavor of a family reunion.” Other participants tend to echo one another as they reach for words to describe what the seminar has come to mean to them. They speak of developing a common language over time, one that allows for the communal exploration of new graphic ideas across geographic, disciplinary, and ideological boundaries. “Now we write, discuss, and hear each other in a different way,” says Martín Böhmer ’90 LLM and JSD candidate. “We share a common definition of a winning argument, of a quality paper or presentation, of a fruitful discussion,” he adds.
Participants speak, too, of “a rich intellectual space” where their community can renew and extend itself. For many, it is perhaps the only space where they can come together with scholars from different countries and institutions to work in a common enterprise.
SELA’s success is the result of enormous joint efforts by the following sponsoring institutions: Universidad de Palermo, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Universidad Adolfo Ibanez, Universidad de Chile, Universidad Diego Portales, Universidad de los Andes, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, Instituto Paraguayo de Derecho Constitucional, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.