Looking at Law School Rankings in India Through the Lens of Democratic Ideals

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-193
Author(s):  
Swarna Hardikar
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
International Convention ◽  
Ranking Systems ◽  
Democratic Ideals

Legal education in India has undergone phenomenal changes in the past few years. Gone are the days when certain established universities had a monopoly over legal education, and when interest in professional legal education was surpassed by the likes of science, technology and medicine, which are essential for the industrial and social development of any country. Lawyers, characterized as social engineers, are equipped with the vision for social change, which is essential in a developing country like India. Lawyers understand the present and have a vision for the future. Social change can be brought about by change in law, which reflects the direction in which the country is progressing. Ranking systems portraying democratic and constitutional ethos will encourage law schools and related authorities to change; accordingly, that is when they will become equipped to bring about relevant social change. Hence, it only seems pertinent to analyse the ranking systems in accordance with the democratic ideals and ethos enshrined in the Constitution, including the Preamble, which is where we find the mention of justice, equality, liberty and fraternity, the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy, where we find the mention of the rule of law, social welfare and the values propounded by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international convention on human rights. This will provide a better perspective for judging the quality of law schools and the law students, which will be essential in understanding the changes which need to be made to the current teaching and learning pedagogy. Students will be more equipped to deal with the challenges posed by the legal profession after graduation and will become harbingers of justice.

scholarly journals Enhancing the Teaching of Human Rights in African Universities: What Role for Law School Clinics?

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Iya
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
South African Universities ◽  
The Status ◽  
Growth Initiative

This Paper aims at exploring the weight accorded to the teaching of human rights in law schools generally and in particular it will attempt to examine the status of human rights in clinical legal education (herein after referred to as “CLE”) in law schools in Africa, with a view to recommending more emphasis in the teaching of human rights and the establishment of specialist human rights clinics as a viable growth initiative for CLE, especially in Africa. Concerns over similar issues were seriously debated during the last conference on Educating Lawyers For Transnational Challenges held from 26–29 May 2004 in Hawaii, USA, (herein after referred to as the “Hawaii Conference”) just as much as they formed a serious bone of contention during the design and implementation of the new LL.B curriculum for South African Universities especially in 1997 and 1998. Because of the intricate issues involved, the emerging concerns are likely to continue. The purpose of raising the concerns here is to increase awareness, provoke more discussion and encourage empirical research on a subject matter considered to be of absolute importance for legal education generally and in Africa in particular.

Affirmative Action and Aboriginal Government: The Case for Legal Education in Nunavut

1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Gallagher-Mackay
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Disadvantaged Communities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Education Gap ◽  
The University ◽  
And Training

AbstractThe Nunavut Land Claim Agreement commits federal and territorial governments to the recruitment and training of Inuit for positions throughout government. In the justice sector, there is currently a major shortage of Inuit lawyers or future judges. However, there also appears to be a fundamental mismatch between what existing law schools offer and what Inuit students are prepared to accept. A northern-based law school might remedy some of these problems. However, support for a law school requires un-thinking certain key tenets of legal education as we know it in Canada. In particular, it may require a step outside the university-based law school system. Universities appear to be accepted as the exclusive guardian of the concept of academic standards. Admission standards, in particular, serve as both a positivist technology of exclusion, and a political rationale for the persistence of majoritarian institutions as the major means of training members of disadvantaged communities. Distinctive institutions – eventually working with university-based law schools – have the potential to help bridge the education gap between Inuit and other Canadians. In so doing, they have the potential to train a critical mass of Inuit to meaningfully adapt the justice system to become a pillar of the public government in the Inuit homeland of Nunavut.

scholarly journals A Medical/Legal Teaching and Assessment Collaboration on Domestic Violence: Assessment Using Standardized Patients/Standardized Clients

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoinette Sedillo Lopez ◽  
Cameron Crandall ◽  
Gabriel Campos ◽  
Diane Rimple ◽  
Mary Neidhart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Standardized Patients ◽  
Law School ◽  
Learning Objectives ◽  
Carnegie Foundation ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
Education Association ◽  
Standardized Clients

<p>Assessment of skills is an important, emerging topic in law school education. Two recent and influential books, Educating Lawyers published by the Carnegie Foundation and Best Practices in Legal Education, published by the Clinical Legal Education Association have both suggested dramatic reform of legal education. Among other reforms, these studies urge law schools to use “outcome-based” assessments, i.e., using learning objectives  and assessing knowledge and skills in standardized situations based on specific criteria, rather than simply comparing students’ performances to each other. </p>

scholarly journals Law School as Social Innovation

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 225
Author(s):  
Lorne Sossin
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Law School ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Face

Legal education is in the midst of a range of challenges and disruptions. This address outlines these dynamics, and explores the potential of social innovation as a model for law schools which both responds to current challenges and enhances resilience in the face of disruption. By reframing legal education as facing outward, and advancing its public interest mandate through partnerships, collaboration and academic initiatives designed to solve social problems, law schools can enhance the student learning experience, generate new forms of legal knowledge and thrive at a time of rapid change. Address delivered at the Australian Law Teachers Association (ALTA) 2016 Conference in Wellington on 8 July 2016.

scholarly journals Interdisciplinarity and Clinical Legal Education: how synergies can improve access to rights in prison

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 210
Author(s):  
Cecilia Blengino
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Law School ◽  
Education Movement ◽  
The Future ◽  
Legal Positivist ◽  
The Law ◽  
Improve Access ◽  
Positivist Approach

<p>This article discusses the resistance experienced by the clinical legal education movement in Italy due to a widespread legal positivist approach which views law as a self-contained technical subject, and excludes interdisciplinarity from the law school curriculum.</p><p>The choice that the newly-born Italian CLE movement now faces is the option to either become a new socio-legal epistemology of law in action and a social change-maker, or to ascribe to a simple restyling of legal education to include certain practical activities aimed at introducing students to the profession. The future of the movement will depend on whether the rapid increase in the number of clinics will be matched by appropriate reflection on "how clinics might be consciously designed around exposing students to gaps between the law in books and the law in action".</p>

scholarly journals A NEW MINORITY? International JD Students in US Law Schools

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (03) ◽  
pp. 647-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen ◽  
Carole Silver
Keyword(s):  
International Students ◽  
Minority Students ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
School Environments ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
International Status

This Article reveals the significance of a new and growing minority group within US law schools—international students in the Juris Doctor (JD) program. While international students have received some attention in legal education scholarship, it mostly has been focused on their participation in the context of programs specially designed for this demographic (e.g. postgraduate programs like the LLM and SJD). Drawing from interview data with fifty-eight international JD students across seventeen graduating US law schools, our research reveals the rising importance of international students as actors within a more mainstream institutional context. In examining the ways these students navigate their law school environments, we find that although international status often impacts identity and participation, not all students encounter its impact similarly. Particularly, while some students use the identity to their advantage, others cannot escape negative implications, even with effort. This is consistent with other scholarship on minority students, and adds to a growing literature that uses their socialization experiences to better understand professional stratification. To unpack these different ways of “being international,” we borrow from Goffman’s theorization of stigma to suggest illustrative variations in the ways international students experience their environments. In doing so, we offer an introductory landscape to better understand this growing population and hope this enables new insights to theorize about other kinds of minority experience.

Teaching Is Part of Legal Education

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Majury
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Scholarly Work

In my contribution to this discussion or the Arthurs Report twenty years later, I want to talk briefly about the teaching aspect of legal education. I want to be emphatic in my focus on teaching because I fear that teaching is increasingly diminishing as an object of our attention and as a subject of our scholarly work. I fear that, for many of us, teaching is becoming a less and less significant part of our discussions, our hirings, our preoccupations, our energy … To me, this is both short-sighted and sad, particularly for those of us who are committed to a law and society approach to legal education. If we are committed to social change, then education, in the form of teaching and learning, is critically important – that is, what we teach and how we teach, and what we model as teachers and thinkers are important instigators and promoters of change. I make this assertion of a lack of serious interest in law teaching despite the fact that there have been a number of Canadian forums on legal education recently. However, admissions and administrative matters largely overshadowed teaching as issues of primary concern and discussion in the two forums that I attended. I do not think these forums generated the kind of on-the-ground, in-our-work-places re-energization and rethinking of legal education and specifically about teaching that was perhaps hoped for.

Innovation and Disruption: Exploring the Potential of Clinical Legal Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-32
Author(s):  
Mary Anne Noone
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Law School ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Government Decision ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Clinical Program ◽  
Real Challenge

It’s a great privilege to deliver this year’s Susan Campbell Oration. I, like many others, had the pleasure of working with Sue on a range of activities. In 2007, Sue conducted a review of the La Trobe Law School Clinical program which was instrumental in helping ensure the program remained an integral aspect of the La Trobe University law course. I hope what I have to say honours Sue’s memory and her contributions to legal education and clinical legal education in particular2.  My focus in this presentation is on how Australian clinical legal education responds to the various innovations and disruptions occurring in the legal arena. The scope and breadth of innovations is mindboggling. There are many predictions about what the future holds for the legal profession, from gloom and doom to utopia, and there is a growing body of literature discussing the implications for the legal profession and legal education. In reality, it is impossible to envisage what the legal world will look like in ten years let alone thirty and that poses a real challenge for those involved in legal education, including clinical legal education. How best to prepare today’s students for the unknown future?  Given that I have no expertise in digital technology and am certainly not a futurologist my comments relate to those areas about which I have some background: access to justice, social security and clinical legal education.  I briefly outline the variety and scope of innovations occurring in the legal world, discuss two related aspects namely access to justice and government decision making, using the example of Robodebt, and then examine the potential for clinical legal education in these disruptive times. I argue that clinical legal education is well placed to take a more central role in Australian law schools and the training of 21st century legal workers. 

The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools: Mr. Langdell's Emblematic “Abomination,” 1890-1915

2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Case Method ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
American Law ◽  
Law Professors

Case method teaching was first introduced into American higher education in 1870 by Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) of Harvard Law School (HLS), where it became closely associated with—and emblematic of—a set of academic meritocratic reforms. Though regnant today, “the ultimate triumph of [Langdell's] system was not apparent” for many years. The vast majority of students, alumni, and law professors initially derided it as an “abomination,” and for two decades case method and the associated reforms were largely confined to Harvard. During the subsequent twenty-five years between 1890 and 1915, a national controversy ensued as to whether case method teaching—and the concomitant meritocratic reforms—would predominate in legal education and, ultimately, professional education in the United States.

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