Curriculum making and reform in legal education, and the National Education Policy 2020

1. What a curriculum is

A curriculum is more than a list of subjects. It is the planned set of learning outcomes, the content and experiences chosen to achieve them, their order, the methods of teaching and the means of assessment. Ralph Tyler (Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, 1949) reduced curriculum design to four questions: what purposes should the institution seek to attain; what experiences are likely to attain them; how can those experiences be organised; and how can we tell whether the purposes are being attained. Each question applies to law.

Writers also distinguish the formal curriculum (the syllabus), the operational curriculum (what is actually taught and examined) and the hidden curriculum (the values students absorb from how they are taught and assessed, such as the lesson that memory counts more than analysis, or that corporate practice is the only success). Reform that changes only the formal curriculum usually fails.

2. Who makes the law curriculum in India

• The Bar Council of India, under the Advocates Act, 1961 and the Rules of Legal Education, 2008, prescribes the structure of the LL.B. degrees that qualify for enrolment: the duration, the compulsory subjects, the clinical papers, minimum teaching hours and attendance (see the note on the BCI).
• Universities, through Boards of Studies and Academic Councils, frame the actual syllabi within the BCI framework. KSLU prescribes syllabi for its affiliated colleges.
• The UGC regulates postgraduate and doctoral education (the LL.M. and Ph.D.) and higher-education standards generally; its model curricula guide universities.
• National law universities have wider autonomy under their own Acts and have led curricular innovation (seminar courses, clinical programmes, interdisciplinary electives).

3. The steps of curriculum making

1. Needs analysis — what the profession, the judiciary, government, the academy and citizens need from law graduates; what the students bring.
2. Learning outcomes — stated as what a graduate will be able to do (analyse a statute, draft a pleading, conduct a client interview, write a research paper), not only what he will know.
3. Selection and sequencing of content — foundation subjects first (constitutional law, contract, torts, crimes), procedural and specialised subjects later, with electives in the final years.
4. Choice of teaching methods to fit each outcome (section 5).
5. Assessment that tests the outcomes: a closed-book examination cannot test drafting or advocacy.
6. Review — feedback from students, alumni, employers and examiners; revision on a fixed cycle; prompt revision when the law changes (the BNS, BNSS and BSA, in force from 1 July 2024, required every law school to rewrite its criminal law courses).

4. Principles of curriculum reform in law

• Balance of core and choice — enough common ground for a recognised professional degree, enough choice for specialisation. The UGC’s choice-based credit system pushes towards choice; the BCI’s compulsory list pushes towards uniformity.
• Skills and values as well as knowledge — the MacCrate Report (United States, 1992) listed the fundamental lawyering skills and values; the Carnegie Report (Educating Lawyers, 2007) called for the integration of doctrine, practice and professional identity.
• Interdisciplinarity — law with economics, sociology, political science, technology and public policy, which is the reason for the integrated five-year degree.
• Social relevance — poverty law, legal aid, gender, environment, the law as it works in district courts and villages, not only in the Supreme Court.
• Local relevance — State laws (land revenue, local government, tenancy) and the language of the courts where most graduates will practise.
• Currency — technology law, data protection, arbitration and international commercial law, which globalisation of practice has made necessary.
• Research — seminar papers and dissertations as part of the curriculum, not an addition to it.

5. Designing teaching methods to suit the curriculum

The idea of constructive alignment (John Biggs) is that outcomes, teaching activities and assessment must point the same way. In law:

The separate notes on the lecture, case, Socratic, problem and clinical methods give the merits and defects of each. The point for curriculum design is that diversity of method follows from diversity of outcomes: a curriculum that sets skills outcomes but teaches only by lecture has not been reformed.

6. The National Education Policy 2020

What it says about legal education. NEP 2020 asks that legal education be competitive globally, adopt best practices and new technologies for wider access to and timely delivery of justice, and be informed and illuminated by constitutional values of justice — social, economic and political — and by the social and cultural context. It asks State institutions offering law to consider bilingual education, in English and the language of the State in which the institution is located.

Its general reforms and their effect on law.

• Regulation. NEP proposes a single Higher Education Commission of India but keeps medical and legal education outside it. Legal education therefore stays under the dual control of the BCI and the UGC for now.
• Multidisciplinary institutions and the end of single-stream colleges: law faculties in multidisciplinary universities, with students able to take courses across disciplines.
• Flexible degrees — multiple entry and exit points and an Academic Bank of Credits. These fit uneasily with the BCI’s integrated professional degree, which admits no exit with a lesser qualification.
• Master’s degrees of one or two years depending on the length of the first degree — relevant to the continuing debate on the one-year LL.M.
• Teaching in Indian languages and the translation of learning materials.
• Research — a National Research Foundation to fund research across disciplines, including the social sciences and law.

How this is examined

Expect “Curriculum making and reform in legal education”, “NEP 2020 and legal education”, or “Designing teaching methods to suit the curriculum”. Use Tyler’s four questions and the hidden curriculum, who makes the curriculum in India, the steps, the principles with MacCrate and Carnegie, the alignment table, and NEP’s legal-education statement with its general reforms. End with an evaluation.