Asian Journal of Legal Education

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-10-06

ISBN:: 2322-0058

Issue Number

No. 11-1, January 2024

Latest documents

Missing the Wood for the Trees: How Indian Legal Education Fails to Deliver the Professional Lawyer?
In this work, we compare the Indian and American legal education systems, to argue that the former lacks the toolkit to impart professionalism among its graduates. ‘Professionalism’ in American literature means the internalization of legal skills along with values of public service. The formation of these cognitive attributes through law school and formative years is known as ‘professional identity formation’. We refer to the American discourse of professionalism and argue that Indian legal education should switch to the American Bar Association output-based model, thereby creating a clear goal but flexible pathways, allowing for faculty-led innovation in courses, curricula and pedagogy. We also underline other aspects of Indian legal education like faculty shortages and barriers between academia and profession as causative factors preventing the growth of professionalism in law graduates, which may eventually disadvantage them in the global workplace. We call for reform and discourse of the basic attitudes of the Bar Council of India and the legal educators.
Inclusive Innovations in Forensic Epistemology and Pedagogy: A Proposed Framework
Clinical Legal Education and Access to Justice During and Beyond COVID-19: Some Reflections of Indian Experience
Legal education aims to impart legal skills and training to law students and develop them into professionals who can render legal services. Clinical legal education (CLE) bridges the gap between the theory and practice of law. CLE has dual purposes of imparting lawyering skills to law students and achieving the social justice mission of law. CLE imparts certain skills and values to students for social justice. Students’ involvement in legal aid clinics makes them more justice-oriented, empathetic and ready for social change. With such orientation, they can assume larger leadership roles as ‘social engineers’. The access to justice crisis compels us to think about legal education’s scope and purpose. In this article, we argue that CLE is indispensable for the attainment of access to justice. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students supervised by clinicians at legal aid clinics worked with communities on issues of ‘migration’, ‘health’ and ‘education’. We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic was instrumental in revealing that legal aid clinics can play a larger role in the attainment of access to justice even during ‘normal times’. This article offers recommendations in order to achieve the goal of securing access to justice for the masses.
Utilizing Experiential Learning Methods to Teach Substantive Law Courses to Undergraduate Students
This study proposes experiential learning methods for delivering and assessing substantive law courses to undergraduate students. The study reviews current experiential learning methods used to teach contract law, the most common substantive law course offered to law and non-law undergraduate students. The identified methods are synthesized and mapped to Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle. The study follows the PRISMA-ScR checklist and explanation guidelines to report its findings. A scholarly search was conducted on Google Scholar and four online databases (ACM Digital Library, EMERALD, PROQUEST and SCOPUS). Of the 44 studies that met the inclusion criteria, 141 essential original constructs were collected, and 7 methods were derived. The study found that role-plays and simulation methods recorded the highest percentage of original constructs (38%, n = 54), followed by fieldwork and clinical methods (26%, n = 36), case-based methods (11%, n = 15), writing task methods (9%, n = 12), problem-based learning methods (7%, n = 11), street law (5%, n = 7) and seminar-based methods (4%, n = 6). The study also synthesized 23 new items for experiential learning methods that may guide the teaching of substantive law courses to undergraduate students. This scoping review adds significant value to the current body of knowledge by presenting novel items that law academics can use to adopt experiential learning methods for teaching substantive law to undergraduate students. These items can also be adapted for the development of experiential-based learning course syllabi and assessments for other substantive law courses not included as a sample of analysis.
Implicit Rhetoric of Genocide in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956)
The article explores the complex nexus of the legal and the literary by re-envisioning the idea of genocide as a legal, social as well as political concept, as the violence engendered by it continues to cast its shadow over humankind. The relevance of Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan lies in its vivid portrayal of how mass passions of religious antagonism result in gripping accounts of bloodshed and forced expulsion of ordinary people in South Asia. The paper also seeks to contest the narrow understanding of genocide where the victim and perpetrator communities are perceived as exclusive categories. Through this exemplary novel, the paper attempts to foreground how fictional narratives mirror the basic conceptualizations of genocide as enshrined in the United Nations Genocide Convention (1948). The paper delves into the blurred distinction between victim and perpetrator communities in the context of partition in South Asia. The article engages in a close textual analysis to shed light on the synthesis of the literary and legal context of genocide in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan. The paper establishes how reading the novel from the legal point of view underscores the contentious nature of genocide that prevailed during the time of Partition.
Justice and Judicial Education: An Unbreakable Bond Cemented by the Rule of Law
The importance of judicial training and education has been recognized time and again by judges and legal professionals not only in India but across the globe. Judicial education and training serve the critical purpose of preserving the rule of law in the country. Judicial education fosters the administration of justice by equipping judges with the skills needed in courtrooms. They develop sensibilities to look beyond their personal preferences and choices and give judgments that suit the dynamic socio-economic realities. Judicial education creates a speedy and impartial justice delivery system that enhances public confidence in the working of our constitutional democracy. However, the judicial education system of our country is not free from challenges. There is a multitude of problems relating to the implementation of judicial pedagogy and the institution itself. These conundrums specifically signal a dire need to revamp our judicial education system by drawing an appropriate curriculum, methodology and action plan that treat participant judges, not as ‘students or trainees’ but as ‘people of knowledge and skill’ that have come to the learning centres to create better solutions to a potential legal issue they may encounter in their profession later in life.
The National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 and the Hybrid Learning Paradigm: Revising Strategies for An Evolving Legal Education Environment
A strong and resilient education system is vital for the progress and growth of any nation, as it equips individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively address current and forthcoming issues, while also keeping pace with rapid technological breakthroughs. The National Education Policy, 2020 (NEP 2020) plays a significant role in creating a comprehensive framework for the transformation of the education sector. The hybrid approach of teaching and learning has the ability to integrate multiple viewpoints within legal education by combining in-person and online interactions, under the guidance of policy. Nevertheless, it is important to conduct a thorough examination of the pedagogical tactics and technology tools that augment the learning experience in legal education, in order to assess the efficacy of this approach in professional courses like law. Given the aforementioned environment, the primary objective of this study is to comprehensively examine the consequences of incorporating a hybrid method of learning in the field of legal education in India, specifically focusing on its policy implications and relevant issues. This study endeavours to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the paradigm, as well as the ongoing problems and limitations associated with it, in the context of legal education. Moreover, the primary objective of this article is to conduct a rigorous analysis of apparent gaps and inconsistencies that may necessitate additional explanation or refinement in order to effectively accomplish the targeted transformative goals. The paper seeks to provide a valuable contribution to the continuing discourse on educational reform and promote the successful implementation of the hybrid model in accordance with NEP 2020 for the purpose of delivering legal education in India, particularly in the context of the post-pandemic global landscape.
The Lifeworld of Law: Methodological Multiplicity in Legal Pedagogy
Multidisciplinary studies in the field of law in India in the last two decades or so have gained traction. The grudging acceptance of insights from social sciences into the technical discipline of law has expanded the horizon of its study. The presence of insights from other disciplines, however, has not predominantly altered the approach to legal education in India and they have at best remained alternate modes of legal analyses juxtaposed with a technical-doctrinal study of law. The methodological challenge is to think of ways to dovetail the insights to co-produce legal knowledge which is shared across disciplines. This paper is an attempt in that direction by bringing in a synthesis between the ‘external’ and the ‘internal’ perspectives, arguing in favour of interdisciplinarity as a pedagogical frame. The approach towards legal pedagogy is heuristic where methodical perspectives are not imparted but demonstrated. This paper undertakes this task in relation to how criminal law in India can be taught through a case study on the law of sedition—Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, examining it from three different perspectives—the doctrinal, the instrumentalist and the constitutivist. The learnings from different vantage points and the exchange between them create lessons for legal pedagogy.
The ‘Legal Unconscious’: Exploring the Intersection of Law and Psychoanalysis
This article explores the intersection between law and psychoanalysis. We argue that psychoanalysis provides a method of reading the law in a novel, nuanced and subversive way. Paying attention to repetitions and repressions in the text of the law, one can discern, what has been named, ‘the legal unconscious’. The essay seeks to introduce law students to some of the foundational ideas of psychoanalysis and illustrate the possibilities of alternative legal imaginations that this method opens up.
The Challenges of Education Development of Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam and Handling Solutions
Education for ethnic minorities (EM) in Vietnam faces different challenges. In each stage of the country’s development, it stands before the difficulties and problems rooted in various specific socio-economic and cultural factors. In the present, even though the government has put many efforts to develop EMs, the gap between the ethnic majority and EMs is still not narrowed, even unchanged in some aspects. Being one of the decisive factors for the development of EMs, education should be put in the centre of the efforts of the Vietnam government. This article analyses some challenges to the education development of EMs. The concept covering the contents of this article is that in any country, especially in Vietnam as a developing country, the government cannot narrow the development gap between ethnic majority Kinh on the one hand and EMs on the other hand if the latter’s right to education is not appropriately provided and duly implemented.