‘The Wisconsin boys’

Officials who studied here now shape Peru’s laws and government

They are some of Peru’s most important government and legal officials. And they call themselves the Wisconsin Boys.

Thirty years ago, this group of now-influential Peruvians – as young law professors – traveled from Lima to the UW–Madison Law School to study and reflect on how to reform the teaching of law in their country.

Today, the program is credited with the transformation of the Peruvian legal education system, and the men who participated in it are known throughout Peru for their UW–Madison connection. “The remarkable thing is this relationship, this warmth, which has lasted for 30 years,” says Zigurds Zile, a UW–Madison emeritus law professor who directed the Peruvian legal education program. “We’re talking about 10 or so people who have not been in touch with Madison for much of this time, but they still feel a very, very tight bond. And now it is their students who are the Wisconsin boys and girls – they are the ones who have been trained to be different and who are now taking their places in important posts in Peru.”

Each summer and fall from 1968 to 1972, three junior law professors from Pontificia Universidad Catolica Del Peru would journey to Madison to study under Zile. The program was initiated by Jorge Avendano, who at the time was the new 31-year-old dean of Catolica’s law school. The Ford Foundation funded the program as part of a movement in the 1960s by the U.S. government and foundations to advance the development of law and legal institutions in Latin America.

For seven months, the Peruvian law professors explored issues in legal education under the tutelage of Zile, himself an immigrant to the United States from Latvia. The professors spent 10 weeks in a summer colloquium called “Rethinking Legal Education” and then prepared teaching materials for their courses over the fall semester. Senior law professors from Catolica traveled to Madison in the summers for a week of discussion with their junior colleagues and Zile.

Zile’s approach went against the grain of traditional Latin American education, which is steeped in lecture-based teaching. At the UW–Madison Law School, the Catolica professors studied a teaching style that emphasized extensive student involvement, with readings, assigned problems that involved legal research and classroom discussion.

Wisconsin’s progressive tradition was what attracted the Peruvian law professors, according to Lorenzo Zolezzi, who studied here in 1968. “Wisconsin had in 1968 something that none of the other schools had: a team of professors who represented the ‘Law in Action’ movement, [which demonstrated] that it was necessary to question everything, necessary also to question the role of the law and lawyers in society,” Zolezzi says.

Since their time in Madison, these law professors have identified themselves as the Wisconsin Boys. And they now occupy some of Peru’s most powerful positions in government and law. Zolezzi is dean of Catolica’s law school. Avendano, the former law school dean, is the minority leader in the Peruvian Congress. Eduardo Ferrero recently was the minister of foreign affairs. Jorge Santistevan is the country’s ombudsman and investigates citizen complaints against the government. Others are leading legal experts and former politicians. Two of the Wisconsin Boys have died, and one no longer lives in Peru. Among the senior faculty who visited Wisconsin during the summers was Roberto McLean, who later became a Peruvian ambassador to the United States.

Catolica paid for Zile and Law School Dean Kenneth Davis to travel to Lima in June to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the cooperative legal education program. “I was quite impressed with how the participants continue to cherish their experience in Madison, even though 30 years have passed,” Davis says. “The exchange program changed not only legal education in Peru, but also led to a change in the substantive law. In fact, entire areas of current Peruvian law can be traced to the work of the participants in trying to develop new law school courses and curricula right here at the UW Law School Library.”

The anniversary of the program, and Zile and Davis’ visit to Peru, were chronicled in Lima’s leading daily newspaper and a national newsmagazine. An editorial in the newspaper El Comercio, headlined “The 30 Years of the ‘Wisconsin Boys'” gave credit for a student protest that week concerning corruption in some Peruvian magistrates to the legacy of the Wisconsin program. Because students were taught that law can be an instrument of social change, the editorial says, they took action. “The spirit of the Wisconsin reform, 30 years later, has returned,” it says. “The young law students have gone out to protest in defense of their teachers.”