The Supreme Court on Tuesday baked for the Indian Bar Association “intervention in the academic affairs of the Law School” and said it should be left to the academician.
The bench said: “Why are you going to interfere in academic matters? Why should BCI decide on courses in law schools, etc. Some academic experts should accept these things. In this country, there are a large number of lawyers. You take on the heavy responsibility of updating their knowledge and organizing training programs.”
The Supreme Court added: “You can receive training on arts such as drafting, understanding case law, and should be part of your statutory responsibility. The course must be entrusted to the Fellows.”
The bench said when senior advocate Vivek Tankha said it was a “existing system”, the bench said: “You (BCI) imposed yourself and claimed you are the only authority in the country.”
Tankha revealed that a stakeholder committee led by the former chief justice of India conducted the inspection and recommended that the framework be equated with one year and two years of LLM degrees. However, the Supreme Court expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of judicial officials at the grass-roots level under the current legal education system.
“In legal education, the judiciary is the main stakeholder…what kind of officials are we getting? They have proper sensitivity. They have compassion. Do they understand ground real estate or just provide mechanical judgment?” it asked. The bench said the academician could examine these issues.
“You (BCI) take care of your responsibilities. There are nearly 1 million lawyers in the country and you should focus on training them instead of going to check law schools,” the bench said.
Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, who appeared in the National Law University consortium, said BCI was trying not only to interfere with LLM, but also to interfere with the PhD.
“The purpose of BCI is to regulate entry into the legal profession. Then there are regulations to be admitted. We are not saying that the two-year course (LLM) is abolished, but would a practicing lawyer like to do two-year LLM or year-on-year LLM?” Singhway said.
The Supreme Court sought response from the Center for the Issues and the University Grants Committee and asked Attorney General Venkataramani to assist in the matter. The court then released the matter in July.
