- Prelims: Supreme Court, collegium system, NJAC, CJI etc
- Mains GS Paper I and II: Structure, organization and functioning of judiciary, Issues with the collegium system etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
- The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law, and Justice submitted a significant report on legal education.
- Recommendations to strengthen the quality of legal education in India.
INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE
Context
Background of legal Education development:
- In the 1990s: advent of the national law universities (NLUs) in India.
- Liberalization and globalization: It opened opportunities for lawyers.
- It led to bright young students opting to study law right after school.
Issues in legal education:
- Most of the NLUs, while successfully attracting excellent students, have failed to emerge as centers of excellence in legal research.
- Only two Indian law schools, Jindal Global Law School and National Law School of India University, figure in the QS rankings of the top 250 law schools worldwide.
- Many of India’s 1,700-odd law schools principally focus on teaching, with scant attention to research.
- India is chiefly the consumer of legal knowledge generated in the West, not its producer.
- Out of more than 800 law journals globally indexed in Scopus (an internationally recognised database that lists leading journals in all fields) barely a handful are Indian law journals.
- This shows the abysmally poor level of research in India’s law schools.
Recommendation of the committee:
- It is to limit the powers of the Bar Council of India (BCI) to regulate legal education.
- The committee recommends that regulating these parts of legal education should be entrusted to an independent body called the National Council for Legal Education and Research (NCLER).
- This proposed body will develop qualitative benchmarks to regulate legal education.
- In addition to judges and practicing lawyers, the NCLER should have eminent law professors with an unimpeachable track record of research and serving legal education.
- The committee emphasizes the need to prioritize and promote research in legal education.
- It will lead to better teaching outcomes and help students develop a critical perspective.
- State funding: Augmenting the research ecosystem in our law schools involves a greater need for state funding.
- Bolstering research will also equip India’s law schools to thrive in the globalizing world.
- The committee is cognisant of the effect of globalization on legal education.
- It recommends developing and delivering a global curriculum
- promoting student and faculty international exchange programmes
- incorporating more international law courses in the curriculum
- increasing students’ exposure to different legal systems.
BCI’s role:
- It is a statutory body established under the Advocates Act 1961 to regulate and represent the Indian bar.
- Functions:
- It performs the regulatory function by prescribing standards of professional conduct and etiquette and by exercising disciplinary jurisdiction over the bar.
- It also sets standards for legal education and grants recognition to Universities Whose degrees in law will serve as qualification for enrolment as an advocate.
- It conducts the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) to grant a ‘Certificate of Practice’ to advocates practicing law in India.
- BCI also funds welfare schemes for economically weaker and physically handicapped advocates.
- It regulates legal education that pertains to acquiring basic eligibility to practice in the courts.
- Other facets of legal education, especially at the post-graduation level, do not pertain to litigation.
Way Forward
- As Albert Einstein said, “The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think”
- To strengthen research, there is a need to recruit “world class global faculty who are top researchers”.
- The parliamentary committee’s suggestions are like a breath of fresh air that may help many law professors keep their chin up.
- The leadership positions in our university’s law faculties and law schools should be held by passionate, charismatic, and visionary academicians
- who inspire and create an enabling and supportive environment
- allows younger academicians to realize their potential as outstanding teachers and brilliant researchers.
- To boost the culture of legal research in our law schools, there should be complete academic freedom and autonomy.
- As Jawaharlal Nehru said, “a university stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas and for the search of truth”.
- A law school or any other academic institution can accomplish this goal only if academicians are free to offer their well-researched views without any fear
- even if these views are at variance with popularly held beliefs in society or contest the dominant ideas of the time.
- The parliamentary committee’s intervention is a welcome development, and one expects all stakeholders to work together to improve the quality of legal education in India.
QUESTION FOR PRACTICE
Critically examine the Supreme Court’s judgment on ‘National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014’ with reference to appointment of judges of higher judiciary in India.(UPSC 2017) (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)
