History and development of legal education in India

1. Ancient and medieval India

In ancient India law was part of dharma and was learnt with it. The Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras (Manu, Yajnavalkya, Narada) and their commentaries were studied in the gurukul and in centres of learning such as Takshashila and Nalanda, as part of a general education in the Vedas, grammar and logic. The Mimamsa rules of interpretation, developed for Vedic texts, were applied to legal texts. There was no separate legal profession in the modern sense; learned men advised kings and assemblies.

Under the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals, Islamic law (fiqh) was taught in madrasas, and qazis and muftis trained in it administered justice. The Fatawa-e-Alamgiri, a compilation of Hanafi law made under Aurangzeb, was used as a work of authority. Hindu law continued to be administered among Hindus in personal matters.

2. The colonial period

Courts first, schools later. The East India Company’s charters set up Mayor’s Courts in the presidency towns (1726), and the Regulating Act, 1773 established the Supreme Court at Calcutta. Barristers trained at the Inns of Court in London dominated the higher courts; Indian vakils practised in the Company’s courts. The Bengal Regulations of 1793 provided for the licensing of pleaders.

Law classes and universities. Organised teaching began in the presidency towns in the mid-nineteenth century. The Government Law College, Bombay traces its origin to 1855. The universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, founded in 1857, examined and conferred law degrees, and law classes were attached to arts colleges. The Legal Practitioners Act, 1879 regulated pleaders and mukhtars.

The character of colonial legal education. It was designed to supply court personnel for a colonial legal system. It was taught part-time, usually in the evenings, by practising lawyers, by lecture, from English textbooks, with emphasis on memorising rules for examinations. Law was seen as a second degree for those who could not find other work. Indian law was taught through English concepts; indigenous law was largely ignored.

Criticism. The Calcutta University Commission (1917–19, chaired by Michael Sadler) criticised the low standard of law teaching and recommended full-time teachers. Little changed.

3. Independence to 1961

After 1950 the Constitution created new demands: a written constitution with fundamental rights, a large body of welfare legislation, and a judiciary expected to deliver social justice. Legal education did not change to meet them. The number of law colleges, many of them private and part-time, grew fast. The Law Commission’s 14th Report on the Reform of Judicial Administration (1958) found legal education in a poor state and recommended raising standards, full-time teaching, and a professional course after the degree.

4. The Advocates Act, 1961 and the Bar Council of India

The Advocates Act, 1961 created a single, unified Bar and the Bar Council of India. The BCI was given the function of promoting legal education and laying down standards of such education in consultation with the universities, and of recognising universities whose degrees qualify a person for enrolment as an advocate (section 7). The three-year LL.B. after graduation, with a practical component, became the standard professional degree. The dual control of legal education by the universities (and later the UGC) on the academic side and the BCI on the professional side dates from this Act. The next note treats the BCI’s role in detail.

5. The 1960s to the 1980s: reform from within

• Law and development. In the 1960s the Ford Foundation and American law schools supported law-teaching reform in India, encouraging the case method, full-time teachers and legal research. The Indian Law Institute, New Delhi (1956) became a centre of research. Trubek and Galanter’s “Scholars in Self-Estrangement” (1974) later reflected critically on the law-and-development movement and its assumption that American models could be exported.
• Socially relevant legal education. UGC workshops in the 1970s, with Upendra Baxi’s report on a socially relevant legal education, argued for teaching law in its social context, for clinical education and for interdisciplinary study.
• Public interest litigation and legal aid. The PIL movement of the late 1970s and 1980s and the legal aid committees (the Bhagwati and Krishna Iyer reports) showed that law could be an instrument for the poor, and that law students could take part in legal aid.
• The five-year integrated course. In the 1980s the BCI introduced the five-year integrated LL.B. after higher secondary school, combining a first degree in arts, commerce or science with law.

6. The national law school experiment

The National Law School of India University, Bangalore, established under a Karnataka Act of 1986 and admitting its first batch in 1988 under its founding director N.R. Madhava Menon, was the first of the national law universities. Its model was a residential, full-time, autonomous university with admission by national test, a five-year integrated course taught by full-time teachers, trimester teaching with continuous assessment, projects and seminars, moot courts, and clinical programmes. It was supported by the Bar Council of India and the Karnataka government and set a new standard.

Other States followed with their own national law universities from the late 1990s (Bhopal, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Jodhpur and later most States). The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) was introduced in 2008 for admission to the national law universities, and is now conducted by the Consortium of National Law Universities. Private law schools with similar models followed.

State law universities. To improve the many affiliated colleges, several States created affiliating law universities. The Karnataka State Law University, Hubballi, established by State legislation in 2009, affiliates the law colleges of Karnataka and conducts their examinations.

7. The resulting two-tier system

8. A timeline

How this is examined

For the history question, take the periods in order (ancient and medieval, colonial, 1947–61, the Advocates Act, reform from within, the national law schools) and end with the two-tier criticism. For “history and future”, give about half the answer to the history and half to the future, using the note on reform. Add the objects of legal education from the first note if the question asks for them.