José is a Brazilian legal scholar and Full Professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation Law School in São Paulo (FGV Direito SP), where he coordinates the Legal Education Observatory (Observatório do Ensino do Direito). He earned his Bachelor of Laws from the University of São Paulo (USP) in 1985, followed by a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English Linguistic and Literary Studies from the same institution. He further completed postdoctoral fellowships at UNICAMP and the Collège de France under the Chair for Social State and Globalization.
His interdisciplinary scholarship bridges law, literature, and political theory to investigate the institutional formation of legal professionals. Rather than treating law schools as neutral training grounds, his empirical and theoretical work analyzes them as sites of cultural reproduction, power dynamics, and symbolic struggle in Brazil. He has served on the board of the Brazilian Association of Law Teaching (ABEDi) and contributed to national higher education commissions for the Ministry of Education (MEC). His major publications include The Brazilian Legal Profession in the Age of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, co-author), O Mundo fora de Prumo: transformação social e teoria política em Shakespeare (2011), and his recent volume Ruptura e educação jurídica (2026), which examines the systemic shifts challenging modern legal pedagogy.