Graduate Program in Law was instituted in 1953 by Edgard Santos, Dean of the Federal University of Bahia and Orlando Gomes, Director of Law School at the time, article 1º of Act 114/35, authorizing, expressly recognized by the Federal Government of Brazil.
The first class concluded the course in 1955, and the first doctors were Edvaldo Pereira Brito, Pedro Manso Cabral, Washington Luiz da Trindade, George Fragoso Modesto, Mário Rodrigues of Figueredo Barbosa and José Joaquim Calmon de Passos, whom became part of the first Staff of the Program.
Extinguished in the 60's, by decision of the military dictatorship that settled in the country, the PPGD / UFBa was recreated in 1975, to offer a Master's Course focused on Economic Law, whose doctrinal conception was based on the avant-garde thought of Orlando Gomes, a nationally recognized professor of Civil Law. In this sense, the concept of economic law was then linked to the idea of a State whose intervention in this area was limited to regulating the generation, distribution and consumption of goods.
The Program's performance, at the Master level, with the evaluation 4 (four), legitimized an old claim of the regional legal community to reinstate the Doctorate Course, which occurred in March 2005.
Since then, the program has been adopting the necessary measures to obtain a VERY GOOD evaluation by CAPES.