Essay on Legal Education in India

Here is your essay on Legal Education in India:

Law, legal education and development have become interrelated concepts in modern developing societies, which are struggling to develop into social welfare states and are seeking to ameliorate the socio-economic condition of the people by peaceful means.

The same is true in our country. It is crucial function of legal education to produce lawyers with a social vision in a developing country.

Today, Law is viewed not merely as an instrument of social control, but also as an instrument of social change. Lawyers have been characterized as social engineers. As liberal education, legal education may serve the society by imparting to law students general and cultural education making them good law-abiding citizens. Such education will instill into the students the significance and relevance of democratic culture.

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As professional education, legal education equips law students for filling different roles in society, and discharging various law jobs, the range and scope of which is always expanding in the modern democratic society, e.g.—Policy makers, administrators, lawyers, law teachers, etc. Accordingly, it is realized in modern India that the legal education ought to have breadth.

Compared with science, technology and medicine, legal education is less technical or less professional. Legal education in India had began during the British period. Much before India gained its Independence in 1947, law courses were started in the Hindu College, Calcutta, Elphinstone College, and Bombay and at Madras.

The primary aim of legal education at the time was to equip law students so that they could help the lower courts and the High Courts in the administration of justice. Before India gained independence in 1947, the study of Law was not taken as a very serious exercise. Consequently, when India gained independence, “Its legal profession and legal teaching were thus not able to play the role they ought, by Western standards, to have played.”

With the dawn of independence in India in 1947, the whole scene concerning legal education started undergoing a transformation. Perspectives about legal education started changing and efforts began to be made for its improvement. The constitution of India is basically a document for Lawyers; there has been a great increase in constitutional legislation since 1950, especially in the area of fundamental rights.

The number of PIL filed in the Supreme Court and High Court for enforcement of fundamental right and the role of Lawyer in the society is now viewed in a much larger perspective than merely as a technical practitioner of Law before the courts.

A basic knowledge of law has become necessary for all those who are engaged in administration, trade or industry.

“A citizen to be effective in enjoyment of his civic capacities needs a basic knowledge of at least some aspects of law. Officials and others who perform important law roles, e.g., a policeman, businessmen or politicians, need an understanding of parts of the law and its underlying policies and values.”

Hence, a change in the quality, content and complexion of legal education is now viewed as a great social necessity.

During the last several years there has been a lot of ferment in the area of legal education and it has been a very much discussed and debated subject.

At present there is need to have reform in legal education because today legal education does not fulfil the demands in society. Therefore, there is need to change pattern of centralized body to deal with the body of legal education in the vast changing society; the complications in socio-economic relation of people with each other have increased and this creates lot of litigations; variety of new crimes generate need a novel situation; selfishness of people has increased day by day and to fulfil greed of human nature deviant people try to exploit common people.

Thus there is needed to make the people aware about their rights and duties, as well as remedies which are available to common people when they are exploited by someone. In India, illiteracy is still not totally eliminated and poverty is the curse of Indian society and because of lack of knowledge about legal aspect such helpless people are always exploited by cruel and shrewd people.

In such a changing society there is need to improve the legal education and expand its scope, with the concept of modernization it is time to enhance its boundaries. There is need to increase its ambit and for that, it is necessary that, legal education is not limited only to the study of law and legislation, but to the study of various procedures of law.

It is not limited to or related to only private individuals, but its object covers the whole world and in short, we can say that today there is need to expand the object of legal education to make the society in fact every layman aware about law and its importance.

We can differentiate legal education according to its purpose one of which is taking degree of law, i.e., LLB and LLM from profession point of view. In such purpose, legal education is taken for earning and second, which is given to the layman in the society is to make him aware about the laws and its procedure and also about his fundamental rights and duties so that his rights cannot be violated and to fulfil this aim, it is necessary to provide legal aid to the public at large.

Legal Aid:

Legal Aid is an instrument to get equality before law and equal protection of law as enumerated in Art. 14 of our Constitution, as a fundamental right. Majority of people in our country are poor and because of their poverty, they are unable to afford expensive legal procedures and so they keep away from it unable to get these freedoms and they are prevented from getting justice.

Article 39-A inserted by Constitution (Amendment) Act 1976, provides for Legal Aid and assistance to poor and indigent litigants. The purpose of these constitutional mandates is that no one should be deprived of his right to move a court of law because of poverty or any other social disability and only through legal education can we make people aware of legal aid.

In legal education, legal aid is one of the major parts.

Law Reform:

Legal education plays a vital role in law reform. Law reform means some reformation, correction in existing legal system or enactments. When a set of rules or a set of principles is enacted by the legislature or a specific principle is declared by the court, sometimes they are not adequate for the society or are ineffective to control any social problem for which such laws are implemented.

In such situations Legal Research, Legal survey, etc. helps in investigation for making new laws on any current issue or changing the existing law which is not adequate for their proper implementation.

And like any other branches, the knowledge of legal research and legal survey in the area of law is very important from the point of view of law reform, and helps very much.

Many enactments are result of efforts of law reformers, such as Dowry Prohibition Act, Child Marriage Restraint Act, Sati Prohibition Act, etc.

Legal education helps in changing the attitude of public; it enables people to think on social problems; it makes people more aware about their rights to duties; it helps them to make the ideal citizens to the concept of law reforms performed through only legal education and to fulfil all purposes of legal education. One of the most important aspect is legal awareness and it is possible only through legal literacy.

Legal Awareness:

It is said that, India lives in villages and therefore to understand the relation of law with society one has to concentrate on Indian villages. Most of the villagers are unaware about their own fundamental rights, legal rights and remedies available to them and so they have no knowledge of various legislations in force for them.

There are number of legislations intended to reduce socio-economic disparities and to bring about equality, but most of the people are unaware about it. It is essential to make not only village people but also urban population, unaware of their rights, aware that educated persons also sometimes get cheated by crafty persons.

Nowadays after quite a prodding from the superior Courts the twin facets legal aid and legal awareness had been given a strong boost and District legal aid Committees, henceforth which were only in nominal existence have started fenchaning full swing. Also legal awareness programs are held regularly at grass root level.

Many times educated people are also exploited by shopkeepers, etc. but they are unaware of their rights given in Consumer Protection Act, etc.

Women especially from villages are also unaware of their rights which are especially enumerated for them by our Constitution and for all these purposes legal awareness is very essential. Legal awareness is possible through legal literacy, but in a country like ours where illiteracy is a curse and rampant in our society, how is it possible to legally educate people who are illiterates. For this purpose legal camps with the help of audio, video instrument should be held in villages or legal literacy can be enhanced with the help of media too.

There are also some major steps to improve legal education and one of the most important is to increase the quality standard of law field. For that there should be more establishments of law colleges. For effective legal education there is need for improvement in legal academic education to maintain standard of legal education.

The Supreme Court in State of Maharashtra v. Manbhai Pragaji Vashi (1995) 5 SCC 730, held that in order to provide the free legal aid it is necessary to have well trained lawyers in the country and this is only possible if there are adequate number of law colleges with necessary infrastructure and good teachers and staff.

It is the duty of the Government to permit establishment of duly recognised private law colleges and give them grant-in-aid like other faculty colleges.

This verdict of the Supreme Court clearly shows that for improvement of Legal education there is need to improve quality of legal academic education and it is also suggested that there should be separate provisions of budget regarding Legal education. The law ministry of every state should have a reasonable contact with every law university.

Today we first need judges of repute and eminence. Since law is one of the social sciences, therefore the study of history, politics, economics and sociology should be linked with the study of law which improves their knowledge and they can broaden their views from all the aspects of human society.

Gradual or subtle changes occurring in our society make it necessary that where the existing law is unable to move with changes taking place in our society, to reform it, or where there exists no law at all, to make a law to regulate the changes that take place in the society. If the law fails to be progressive, it is bound to be disregarded and thus to decay and die because law is meant for society.

Law possesses both creative and moulding power and, therefore, persons dealing with law, as legislators, judges, teachers, or practitioners should be, more than highly trained craftsmen and for that purpose it is important to study law along with social science and language to improve legal education.

For the improvement of legal education, it is also suggested to engage active social workers, sarvodaya workers who can easily interact with common people, and find out the deficiencies in the enactment and the problems of implementation of any legislations and also make the people aware about various legal remedies; the social workers eliminate the fear about legal procedures and courts from the hearts of common people and for that purpose it is beneficial to give legal training to social workers.

If all objectives of legal education have been achieved then it is possible to protect the neglected and downtrodden poor and indigent against the onslaughts of the more powerful and elite sections of society and provide them an opportunity of getting justice. No one is exploited, everyone becomes aware of their own rights and duties and no one should be deprived of his rights because of poverty and illiteracy.