Legal Education and the Citizen
Chapter Four
Syllabus topic 1, "Objective of Legal Education"
Pages 13 to 16 of 543
In one line
Three objectives of legal education face outwards, at people who are not lawyers: it produces citizens who know enough law to use it, it is the means by which law is made an instrument of social change, and it is what makes the constitutional promise of access to justice deliverable.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: legal education has social objectives distinct from its professional ones, namely the creation of legal awareness among citizens so that rights are not lost through ignorance, the use of law as an instrument of planned social change or social engineering, and the securing of access to justice under Article 39A of the Constitution, which the Supreme Court has held requires an adequate supply of properly equipped law colleges.
Objective one: the legally literate citizen
A right nobody knows about is not a right. A tenant who does not know that a notice must be served, a worker who does not know what is due on termination and a woman who does not know that a complaint may be made without a lawyer are each in the position of having a legal entitlement and no way to use it.
Legal education answers this in two ways. It teaches non-lawyers directly, through legal literacy programmes, camps and school and college courses, which is topic 4 and is taken up at chapters 650 to 670. And it produces the lawyers, para-legal volunteers and teachers who run those programmes.
The Constitution supports the objective from an unexpected place. Article 51A(h) makes it a fundamental duty of every citizen to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform. Legal literacy work is one of the ordinary ways that duty reaches people who will never study law.
The measure of success here is different from the professional objectives. A citizen taught law is not expected to argue a case. They are expected to recognise that something is a legal problem and to know where to take it. Every later chapter on legal literacy is built on that narrower and more achievable aim.
Objective two: law as an instrument of social change
The claim. Law is not only a record of what a society already believes; it is a tool used deliberately to change what it does. Abolishing untouchability, prohibiting dowry, guaranteeing minimum wages and reserving seats in local bodies were all attempts to move a society by legal means.
Where legal education comes in. A statute that changes behaviour needs three things beyond the words: people who can draft it so it works, people who can enforce and interpret it, and people who can find out whether it is doing what it was meant to do. Legal education produces all three, and the third is the legal survey of topic 4.
Legal Education and the Citizen
The honest qualification, which an examiner rewards. Law changes behaviour unevenly and sometimes not at all. A rule with no enforcement machinery, no awareness among those it protects and no lawyer willing to take the case is a rule on paper. That is exactly why the objective is stated as an instrument: an instrument has to be used, and using it is what the rest of this syllabus teaches.
The phrase to know. Law as a means of social engineering is the standard formulation, and it means the conscious use of legal rules to produce a chosen social result. A student should use it and then immediately say what the mechanism is, because the phrase without a mechanism is decoration.
Objective three: legal education and access to justice
The constitutional provision. Article 39A, inserted by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act 1976, directs that the State shall secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice on a basis of equal opportunity, and shall in particular provide free legal aid, by suitable legislation or schemes or in any other way, to ensure that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or other disabilities.
Access to justice is a fundamental right, and the Court has said what it consists of. In Anita Kushwaha v. Pushap Sudan, (2016) 8 SCC 509, a Constitution Bench had to decide whether it could transfer cases to and from Jammu and Kashmir where the ordinary transfer provisions did not apply, and to do so it decided whether access to justice is a fundamental right at all. It held that it is, under Article 21 and also under Article 14, because an inability to reach an adjudicatory mechanism defeats equality before the law. It identified four facets: the State must provide an effective adjudicatory mechanism; that mechanism must be reasonably accessible in terms of distance; the process must be speedy; and access must be affordable to the litigant.
Now join that to legal education. A guarantee of free legal aid is worth exactly what the supply of competent, willing lawyers is worth, and that supply comes from legal education. The link is not merely logical: the Supreme Court has drawn it.
In State of Maharashtra v. Manubhai Pragaji Vashi, (1995) 5 SCC 730, decided on 16 August 1995, public interest petitions in the Bombay High Court had sought grant in aid for non government law colleges in Maharashtra. Private colleges in engineering, Ayurveda and education received grant in aid; law colleges did not, although a committee under the Education Minister had recommended extending the scheme from 1985-86 and the State had not acted. The High Court directed the State to extend the scheme and the State appealed.
Legal Education and the Citizen
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeals. The exclusion of law colleges was discriminatory on the material found by the High Court; and the direction could be sustained independently on Article 21 read with Article 39A, because the State's obligation to provide free legal aid requires an adequate number of properly equipped law colleges, since without legal education for a good number of students the public will be deprived of legal assistance.
Why it matters. It converts an assertion into an authority. A candidate can write that legal education serves access to justice and cite a Supreme Court decision holding that funding law colleges is part of the constitutional duty to provide legal aid.
A worked example
Take a legal aid clinic attached to a law college in Mumbai, of the kind regulation 24 of the NALSA (Legal Services Clinics) Regulations 2011 recognises, taught in full at chapter 600.
Trace the three objectives through it. The clinic runs a legal literacy camp in a nearby settlement, and a woman learns that maintenance may be claimed. That is objective one.
She claims it, and the law does something it was designed to do, moving a household from one arrangement to another by legal means. That is objective two.
She could not have afforded a lawyer. The District Legal Services Authority appoints a panel lawyer under the 2010 regulations, and the students prepare the file. That is objective three, and Anita Kushwaha's fourth facet, affordability, is the one being satisfied.
Now remove legal education from the example. There is no clinic, no student, no panel lawyer and nobody who knew that maintenance existed. Every one of the three objectives fails at once, which is the point of putting them in a single chapter.
What this does NOT mean
It does not mean law colleges are social work colleges. The objectives are served by producing competent lawyers who then do this work, not by replacing legal training with activism.
It does not mean the objectives are met. Chapters 520 and 640 are about how far short the delivery falls.
And it does not mean law can do it alone. Anita Kushwaha's four facets include distance and speed, which are questions of courts and budgets, not of curriculum.
Quick revision
Three outward facing objectives: the legally literate citizen; law as an instrument of social change; and access to justice.
Article 39A, inserted by the Forty-second Amendment 1976: the State shall secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice on a basis of equal opportunity, and shall provide free legal aid so that opportunities for securing justice are not denied by reason of economic or other disabilities.
Legal Education and the Citizen
Anita Kushwaha v. Pushap Sudan, (2016) 8 SCC 509: access to justice is a fundamental right under Articles 21 and 14, with four facets, namely an effective adjudicatory mechanism, reasonable accessibility in distance, speed, and affordability.
Manubhai Pragaji Vashi, (1995) 5 SCC 730: the Article 39A duty to provide legal aid requires an adequate number of properly equipped law colleges, so grant in aid could not be denied to law colleges alone.
Article 51A(h) supports the legal literacy objective from the side of the citizen's own duties.
Test yourself
1. State the four facets of access to justice and name the case. An effective adjudicatory mechanism, reasonable accessibility in terms of distance, speed of the process, and affordability to the litigant. Anita Kushwaha v. Pushap Sudan, (2016) 8 SCC 509, a Constitution Bench.
2. What is the authority for saying that funding legal education is part of the constitutional duty to provide legal aid? State of Maharashtra v. Manubhai Pragaji Vashi, (1995) 5 SCC 730, where the Court sustained a direction to extend grant in aid to private law colleges on Article 21 read with Article 39A, holding that free legal aid requires an adequate number of properly equipped law colleges.
3. Explain law as an instrument of social change, and give the qualification an examiner will look for. It means the conscious use of legal rules to produce a chosen social result, requiring drafting, enforcement and evaluation, all of which legal education supplies. The qualification is that a rule with no enforcement, no awareness among its beneficiaries and no lawyer to take the case does not change behaviour, so the instrument has to be used.
4. Why is the measure of success for legal literacy different from that for professional legal education? Because a citizen taught law is not expected to argue a case but only to recognise a legal problem and know where to take it, so the content, the method and the test of success all differ from those of a degree course.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.