From Empire to Empathy? Clinical Collaborations Between the Global North and the Global South-an essay in conversation with Daniel Bonilla

Abstract

In his essay "Legal Clinics in the Global North and South: Between Equality and Subordination," Daniel Bonilla acknowledges the value of collaboration between law clinics of the Global South and the Global North, particularly the contributions these cooperative efforts can make to promoting more just societies and the skills they can foster in the participating students. The essence of Daniel's thesis, though, is that North-South clinical collaboration is dominated by a vertical relationship that both reflects and reinforces a relationship of systematic Northern domination that pervades legal academic exchange and the production, control, and use of legal knowledge. These collaborative initiatives are examples, then, of a nearly inevitable global neo-colonialism that shapes interactions between the North and South.