During his professional performance, the lawyer encounters situations that exceed mere regulatory aspects. The exercise of his duties requires, then, deep reflection and comprehensive knowledge of reality. Unfortunately, along the way, it is not unusual to lose interest in reading books unrelated to legal topics. Given the progressive distancing of fundamental areas of knowledge, we believe that we must promote the healthy habit of reading not only to grow professionally but to enrich ourselves intellectually.
The great jurists of history, in addition to being accurate analysts of problems that concern the legal universe, were conspicuous intellectuals. Along these lines, we have names like Norberto Bobbio or Carl Schmitt, who undoubtedly transcended knowledge beyond legal borders. Studying law is a decision that involves discipline and sacrifice, and also, a desire for study that must be open to new ideas to achieve recognition in public debate.
Just like a philosopher, a writer, a pedagogue, a psychologist, a scientist, etc.; They must know laws to understand modern society. Likewise, the lawyer must try to encompass knowledge from all branches of knowledge to optimize their analysis and be consistent with the ultimate goal of the career: the enduring search for reason and justice.
That is why we make a selection of those titles that are essential to deepen the study of the system and order that govern and have governed the history of humanity. We make this interesting catalog of works available to readers.
1.- Plato’s Republic (380 BC)
In his most famous work, Aristotle’s teacher leaves us a legacy of a primitive concept of the State. In that sense, his approach to how placing a philosopher at the top of the power structures would benefit citizens is well known. According to his ideas, they were more capable than the average, and therefore could better look after the interests of the population. For Plato, laws must be the reflection of the State’s will to achieve the common good. From this, we extract that the philosopher understood that law could not contradict the idea of justice.
2.- The prince by Nicolás Machiavelli (1531-1532)
Although this book has been, many times, described as the holy grail of political opportunism; The truth is that this responds to a decontextualization of what Machiavelli did. In his work, the Italian describes the politics of his time from a realistic perspective, but not malicious or exploitative. He analyzes the relationships that arise from the constitution of state power, and then proposes a kind of “ruler’s manual.” In an interesting twist to what is conventionally established, Machiavelli explains that law can be a relationship of political forces.
3.- The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (1600)
This brilliant play written by one of the greatest geniuses in Literature, immerses us in the story of Bassanio, a young man of descent but down on his luck, who falls into debt with an old moneylender, establishing that if he is not paid on time established (three months), his best friend (Antonio, a rich merchant), will agree to give him a pound of his flesh. The contract is signed without any objection from the parties but is ultimately breached. The reason seems to be that of the miser, at a time when Venice lived on commerce and respected its laws to promote credibility among investors. A lawyer named Baltasar will save Antonio’s life, after an impeccable legal argument.
4.- Metaphysics of customs by Immanuel Kant (1797)
There is no doubt that Kant was one of the greatest philosophers in history, as evidenced by works such as Critique of Pure Reason or Perpetual Peace. The Prussian defends the existence of rational ethical-legal foundations as a priori concepts that belong to the original rational structure of the human subject. These would serve to provide the individual with the necessary legitimacy. Kant also develops the concepts of the doctrine of right and the doctrine of virtue.
5.- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866)
It tells the story of a young law student, who, faced with the desperate economic situation in which he found himself, decides to commit a crime: murder an old loan shark, whom he considered a useless human being for society. From his point of view, he has earned this power by being different from ordinary people, and he can commit crimes to achieve justice. He progressively sees how he can escape the ius puniendi, but not the moral dilemmas that have haunted him since he decided to commit evil. An essential novel.
6.- The trial of Franz Kafka (1925)
Josef K., a bank clerk, is arrested when he wakes up one morning, for no apparent reason. Little by little, he finds himself immersed in a legal tangle from which he will not be able to get out. All the effort he makes to elucidate the truth seems completely absurd, because the law, instead of serving the principles of justice and freedom; becomes an apparatus that is only there to justify bureaucratic jobs and to sustain a State fiction that ends up losing control of the individual. Without a doubt, Kafka outlined some of the fundamental problems of modern law.
7.- The fear of freedom by Erich Fromm (1941)
This work, written by one of the most prestigious psychoanalysts of the 20th century, was a response to the Nazi onslaught, in search of its scope and meaning. In addition, a psychological analysis of the immediate consequences that the Second World War left on the individual is attempted. Fromm concludes that authoritarian leaders suffer from a deep and erratic psychic fear of freedom, because only by controlling all aspects of human life do they manage to emerge as one-dimensional men. In this way, politicians like Hitler or Mussolini do not see their power threatened, and they manage to slip into the sphere of their ideology.
8.- 1984 by George Orwell (1949)
This brilliant novel, which although it was written to satirize the authoritarian regimes of the last century, is perfectly applicable to the reality of our times. In a dystopia where there are only three countries, which are in constant war, and where it is possible to grotesquely manipulate history (every day); Winston Smith begins to question whether the social order is perfect. We find ourselves in a London controlled by a political party that leads the so-called “Big Brother”, the political, social, and spiritual guide of all the men of Oceania. Winston has no idea if Big Brother is just a symbol or a real person if everything is being manipulated or a figment of his imagination, or if it is even possible to have some idea of freedom without being persecuted by the party, and subsequently re-educated. or destroyed. Essential work to understand how the concept of freedom has been manipulated to subject men.
9.- Monitor and punish. Birth of the Prison by Michael Foucault (1975)
This book takes a historical tour of the methods of punishment that have prevailed over time. Michael Foucault, who was considered the thinker of the moment in the seventies, divides his work into four parts: torture, punishment, discipline, and prison. Conceived from the beginning as a theoretical proposal that denounces the excesses of power and the progressive exclusion of those considered different or unfit. Without a doubt, it gives us various insights into the abuses that legal institutions allow. For Foucault, believing that prisons fulfill their resocializing function is as absurd as believing that they are perfectly legal.
10.- Modernity, identity, and utopia by Aníbal Quijano (1988)
Aníbal Quijano is the most important Peruvian (and even Latin American) sociologist of recent decades. In this text, the intellectual reflects on how, since the colony, men on this side of the world have normalized situations such as political or economic subjugation. Despotism and repression, historically, have forced us to believe in a rationality that promises a gradual liberation of man, but that significantly has not achieved major changes in the paradigm of Latin American societies. Quijano proposes a new way of thinking, from the particularities of the American people, that bases a democratic project where the people’s right to free, diverse, and autonomous development is truly assured; respecting their ancestral and cultural values.