Prof Dr K L Bhatia
Draft New Education Policy 2019, if ever implemented, shall be pulsating as well as vibrant. NEP in an ocean within a tear emphasizes that education is quintessence of knowledge from foundational learning to higher education inclusive technology and vocational education. Education is embodiment of learning. Learning is a continuous process from cradle to crawl to walk to talk to eternal eternity. Education has been daunted centre since independence and Dr. S. Radhakrishnan Report 1948, Education Policy 1986 and 1992 Reports failed to dent the challenges the education system countenance.
NEP comprises Four Parts penned down in 477 pages explaining the four wings on fire to overcome the crisis of education in India, viz., Learning to Know; Learning to Do; Learning to Live together; and Learning to Be (to develop personality) devoid of to be or not to be.
Part II (Pages 200-338) is devoted to Higher Education both Professional and Non-Professional Education inclusive Technology in Education and Vocational Education (Part III Pages 339-390) to transforming education in new millennia. Chapter 16 of Part II gives vent to in depth narrative on Professional Education. Chapter 16.7 (Pages 303-304) devotes hardly one page on the discourse of Legal Education in India. It seems as if legal education being professional has been least precedence for the authors of NEP.
Legal Education in India has been more theoretical in dissemination and less experiential in legal practice orientation except only Moot Court exercises. Bar Council of India governs three years LL.B. program and five years B.A./B.Com./B.Sc./B.B.A./B.Tech. LL.B. integrated program or M.B.A. LL.B. 6 years integrated program. U.G.C. manages LL.M. (two years as well as one year) and doctorate in law programs.
Pune International Seminar 1972 under the dynamic leadership of Late Professor S. K. Agrawala had looked into the crisis the legal education in India faced and to plug loopholes therein and suggested corrective measures by gaining international experiences to bringing revolutionary transformations in legal education in India. This was reiterated in Chandigarh Workshop with a suggestion to move a step ahead in five years integrated legal education in India after 10+2 schooling. UGC CDC Report in two volumes under the Chairmanship of a living legend in Law Professor Upendra Baxi had put conscientious efforts to suggesting measures to bring in transformation in legal education in India. U.G.C. C. D. C. 2001 Report under doyen legal educationist Professor P. Leelakrishnan, along with a team of prominent legal enthusiasts including the author submitted an exhaustive report to bringing improvements in legal education in India both at undergraduate with honors and post-graduate levels. Lastly, the Bar Council of India Curriculum Development Committee’s Draft document on five years LL. B. integrated course has endeavored to present blueprint for five years law courses. Be that as it may, the said reports have not been looked into by the Law Schools of India with majestic splendid bliss as those ought to have been.
However, conscientious efforts are imperative to wriggle out the puzzle as to how to integrate non-law subjects with law subjects. The objective of introducing five years integrated law course was to disseminate to the law students a vivid correlation approach, namely, why a study of history and law is imperative in the domain of legal education; why economics and law is expedient; why language and law integration or configuration is essential to develop legal language and legal writing; why political science and law is necessary; why psychology and law interaction is the need of the day; why sociology and law is imminent; why science and technology and law integration is about to come particularly in the regime of patent and intellectual property law in the light of Novartis case and Basmati case; why commerce and law is the need of time in the furtherance of economic unity and fiscal integration; why business management and law is prominent in improving court management with least purloining haunt?
Integrating non-law courses : Some considerations for Integration
The Bar Council of India Curriculum Development Committee’s Draft document on Five Years LL.B. integrated Course has endeavoured to present a blueprint for five years law courses. However, it has conscientiously made no efforts to wriggle out the puzzle as to how to integrate non-law subjects with law subjects. The objective of introducing 5 years integrated law course was to disseminate to the law students a vivid correlation approach. The object of new legal education policy has been to inculcate an interest in the assimilation of evolution of law, legal and constitutional institutions. The new legal education aims at generating a deep interest in the domain that should not make an impression in the minds of thinkers to say that justice delivery system is good in law but bad in economics. Legal education is to stimulate an interest in the young law student that how political theories of law, socio-economic-distributive justice, freedom, State as Nation, welfare are urgently crucial to the working of democratic constitution culture, polity and morality. The new legal education addresses to kindle correlation between law and psychogenic, sociogenic and anthropogenic approaches. It helps lawmen to gain deep insights in the understanding of deviant behaviour, causes of social disorganisation and approaches to re-socialisation or social re-organisation. It presents insubstantial blueprint for creating the use of legal language and legal writing in simple legal English devoid of legalese, which should appear to be the soul of professionalism in an ocean within a tear. The BCI Draft CDC Report (Chapter III) does not present in the least substantial in puts as to how to integrate non-law subjects with law discipline.
A modest attempt to develop modules integrating non-law subjects with law and invite meaningful debate that shall help to promote carrying a great weight in our accomplishments to developing experiential “non-law and law” integration learning.
Law is an evolutionary process. The evolutionary process passes through multitudinous phases as well as stages. A page of history of justice, the vision of times past, is the need of successive generations that may be explained in the mighty legal phrase of Justice Marshall: “We must not forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding”. History and law, in my humble opinion, ought to be developed in the integrating module: Why Philosophy of history is imperative in legal education and its integration with law by conceding evolution of law or law and evolutionary process.? Background to Indian law — Pre-Common law, namely, Dharma as law (Vidhi), Justice (Nyaya) and Policy Perspectives (Niti Padhati) manifestations and contours; Common law and post-Common law manifestations and contours should be the narrative.
Interdisciplinary study of psychology and law may be from the precepts of psychology and law correlations; psychology and criminal mind; deviant behavior and causal factors; Psychogenic, Sociogenic and Anthropogenic approaches to normal and abnormal behavior; Psychology of Client-Advocate: Professionalism psycho-analysis approaches; Criminology, Penology, Correctional approaches from social disorganisation to reorganisation or re-socialisation.
The module of Interdisciplinary study of Sociology and Law may be well thought-out on the genesis of Sociology of law and sociological school of thought; Law as a product of social change and/or vice-versa; Social justice, economic justice and distributive justice; Social disorganisation and re-socialisation — deviance, drift: non-broken and broken home and neighbourhood impact; Juvenile delinquency: socio-psychogenic background characteristics; Impact of sociological understanding and social change in the outcome of legal decisions: some of contemporary judicial decisions and role of society, e.g., live-in relationship (law and morality), adoption, property rights of women; Contemporary socio-legal-ethical issues, e.g. abortion, euthanasia.
Language and Law: Legal Language and Legal Writing integration should be from experiential learning precept, namely, What is legal language? What is its scope in legal education? Why is it significant in the discipline of legal education? Why integrating legal language, human values and professionalism is imminent? How to develop simple legal English devoid of legalese? How to develop the use of Legal terms, expressions, words, and phrases and use of language proverbs in legal communication as well as advocacy and its impact? How to build up the use of Latin terms and their significance in law? How to develop legal language learning (LLL), legal language writing (LLW) and legal language communication (LLC)?
Similarly, the course on law and economics should introduce the methodology of law and economics to utilizing the standard tools of economic analysis for the study of law and legal institutions with emphasis on economics of property; economics of contracts; economics of torts law (liability and notion of compensation, damages and exemplary damages); economics of lawmaking; economics of emerging areas in law in the new global economic market such as economics of intellectual property, WTO, etc.
Integrative approach to Law and Political Science seems to be a dynamic challenge and may be from the precept of: Concept of State and ‘Nation State’: From Preservative to new world order; Concept of ‘Invisible State’: Deceitful, deception, relativism, realistic, social-engineering, dynamism and reincarnation; Contours of Political Schools of Thoughts and their integration with Law; Law and Political system: Constitution, Constitutional Law and Constitutionalism ; Progressive movements of societies from status to contract: Law and Society; Law and Justice: Social, Economic, Political and Distributive; Law and Rights: Social, Economic and Political Rights: Basic Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: Jural Postulates of Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles of State Policy and Fundamental Duties Correlations and Opposites Formulations; Law and Public Opinion: Strengths and weaknesses; and Law and Decision Making Process.
Intensive academic inputs are imperative to develop integrative modules in respect of science and law particularly the role of science in the area of intellectual property law in the light of Novartis case and Basmati Rice case; business management and law particularly in the area of trial court and higher court case management so that court management is not purloined.
My modest academic attempt is not the conclusive input. I shall be too happy to receive more inputs from the readers to making five years legal study much more productive.
In the backdrop of the above, the object new legal education policy ought to be to inculcate an interest in the assimilation of evolution of law, legal and constitutional institutions. The new legal education policy ought to aim at generating a deep interest in the domain that should not make an impression in the minds of thinkers to say that justice delivery system is good in law but bad in economics. Legal education is to stimulate an interest in the young law students that how political theories of law, socio-economic-distributive justice, freedom, State as Nation, welfare are urgently crucial to the working of democratic constitution culture, trust, polity and morality. The new legal education policy ought to address to kindle correlation between law and psychogenic, sociogenic and anthropogenic approaches. It will help lawmen to gain deep insights in the understanding of deviant behavior, causes of social disorganization and approaches to re-socialization or social re-organization. The New Legal Education Policy should substantially present blueprint for creating the use of legal language and legal writing in simple legal English, devoid of legalese or legalism or verbosity, which should appear to be the soul of professionalism in an ocean within a tear.
Transformative Legal Education should have two pronged strategic approaches. New Legal Education Policy should be devised or designed to making world class litigant lawyers, judges, law craftsmen, law professionals, law professors, law researchers and law thinkers.
Experiential Learning Law (ELL) ought to be the priority. ELL ought to be directed to training taught about the interstices as well as intricacies of law at trial court and higher court practice through the instrumentality of Mock Trial and Moot Court. It has been the long experience that Mock Trial has been the least mode of instructions in Law Schools of the country; the only emphasis has been on Moot Court exercise. It is the fact that the concept of legal education has undergone sea-change to cope with the demands created by the global free market economy and corporatization of the business. This indeed has generated new innovative areas of employment in the field of law at the national and transnational spheres. Unfortunately, traditional system of legal education, for various and varied reasons, was not in a position to accept the challenge. Therefore, a new approach to legal education, which is the need of the hour, may be adopted to develop market oriented specialized courses and adopting new techniques, technologies and strategies for invigorating teaching-learning process. In order to develop critical thinking and analytical skills a new strategy of Clinical Legal Education through the modus of “Court Room Exercises” focusing only on Mock Trial and Moot Court Exercises is followed as a regular component in the teaching-learning process. In mutual trust and faith there is gleaming spark to achieving the aspiring and wannabe goals.
(The author is former Professor of Eminence National Law University Jodhpur)
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