law education reforms and standing committee

​The recommendations made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law, and Justice, on research and other issues,are timely

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law, and Justice 

1 It recently submitted a significant report on legal education, making several path-breaking recommendations to strengthen the quality of legal education in India. 

2 But Since Independence, legal education, unlike medicine and engineering, has not been a top priority for India’s policymakers.

 आज़ादी के बाद से, चिकित्सा और इंजीनियरिंग के विपरीत, कानूनी शिक्षा, भारत के नीति निर्माताओं के लिए सर्वोच्च प्राथमिकता नहीं रही है।

 कानूनी पढ़ाई सुधार का इतिहास 

Things started to change for the better in the 1990s with the advent of the national law universities (NLUs) in India.

 liberalisation and globalisation, the Indian economy in the 1990s threw up many new opportunities for lawyers, which, in turn, led to bright young students opting to study law right after school.

 Several NLU graduates got placed in high-paying law firm jobs while many others went abroad to study at top universities, with quite a few bagging prestigious scholarships such as Rhodes and Chevening.

national law universities (NLUs) in India क्या क्या फेस कर रही 

1  Most of the NLUs too, while successfully attracting excellent students, have failed to emerge as centres of excellence in legal research. 

2 This is borne by the fact that 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.

A new regulator 

1 to limit the powers of the Bar Council of India (BCI)

Against this backdrop, a key recommendation of the committee is to limit the powers of the Bar Council of India (BCI) to regulate legal education

. The BCI’s role in regulating legal education that pertains to acquiring basic eligibility to practise in the courts is indispensable.अपरिहार्य

2 (NCLER)

regulating these parts of legal education should be entrusted  सौंपा 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 practising lawyers, the NCLER should have eminent law professors with an unimpeachable track record of research and serving legal education.

Bolstering research

1  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.

2  This shows the abysmally poor level of research in India’s law schools.

3 The committee emphasises the need to prioritise and promote research in legal education, which, in turn, will lead to better teaching outcomes and help students develop a critical perspective. 

4 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”

5  To strengthen research, there is a need to recruit “world class global faculty who are top researchers”. 

.

6 greater need for state funding.

As the committee remarks, demanded the research ecosystem in our law schools undoubtedly involves a greater need for state funding.

क्या  फायदा 

Bolstering research will also equip India’s law schools to thrive in the globalising world.

 The committee is cognisant of the effect of globalisation on legal education. 

It thus correctly recommends 

🍁developing and delivering a global curriculum, 

🍁promoting student and faculty international exchange programmes,

🍁 incorporating more international law courses in the curriculum, 

🍁and increasing students’ exposure to different legal systems.

Changing mindsets

 reform is impossible without these: 

1 first, 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 that allows younger academicians to realise their potential as outstanding teachers and brilliant researchers. 

 deans of law faculties and vice-chancellors of law universities in India have failed to provide professional leadership. 

No amount of money or perks can overcome such a primary institutional deficiency.

2 Second, 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”. 

 academicians shuld free to offer their well-researched views without any fear

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.

The views expressed are personal

Source the hindu