The Fourteenth Law Commission Report
Chapter Nine
Syllabus topic 1, "Objective of Legal Education"
Pages 34 to 36 of 543
In one line
In 1958 the first Law Commission of India, under M.C. Setalvad, examined the whole administration of justice and found that legal education was in a poor state, and its account of why has framed every Indian discussion of the subject since.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Fourteenth Report of the Law Commission of India, on the Reform of Judicial Administration, submitted in 1958 under the chairmanship of Shri M.C. Setalvad, was the first official examination of legal education in independent India; it found the standards of legal education unsatisfactory, attributed this to part-time teaching, overcrowded classes, inadequate libraries, the absence of full time faculty and an examination system that tested memory, and its recommendations for a longer full time course, better libraries and better teaching are the ancestors of the Bar Council of India's Rules of Legal Education.
Why this report is set as a topic
Because it is the reference point. Every later report, including the 184th, opens by recording what the 14th said and asking whether anything has changed.
Because it connects legal education to the courts. The Commission was not studying education for its own sake; it was studying the administration of justice and found that the quality of the courts depended on the quality of the people entering them.
And because it is the first time the problem was described officially. Before 1958 the complaints existed in speeches and in journals. After 1958 they existed in a Government report, which is a different kind of fact.
What the Commission was and what it did
It was the first Law Commission of independent India, chaired by M.C. Setalvad, who was then the Attorney General.
Its Fourteenth Report is on the Reform of Judicial Administration, and it is very large, running to two volumes. Volume one deals with the civil side, from the lowest courts to the Supreme Court, and volume two with the criminal side.
Its method is worth noting for Module III. The Commission worked from a long questionnaire and from oral evidence taken from a large number of witnesses across the country. That is empirical work, and chapter 700 uses it as a worked example of a legal survey.
Legal education appears in it as a cause, not a topic. The Commission was asking why the administration of justice was slow and unsatisfactory, and one of its answers was the quality of the people staffing it.
The findings, as the later report records them
A caution first, and it is the honest one. The 14th Report itself is not in this book's authority folder; the copy that could be reached is the 184th Report, which sets out the 14th Report's position on legal education at length. What follows is therefore the 14th Report as the 184th records it, and a student should attribute it that way.
The Fourteenth Law Commission Report
The condition of the colleges. Law was being taught in institutions with inadequate libraries, insufficient accommodation and classes far too large for anything but lecturing.
The teachers. Teaching was substantially part-time and by practitioners, with too few full time teachers to constitute a faculty, to supervise students or to do research.
The course. It was too short for the material, and the part-time evening pattern meant the student's law degree competed with a job or another course.
The examination. A single written examination at the end of the course tested what a student could recall and could not test whether the student could use the law, which is the criticism topic 3 of this syllabus asks about directly.
The consequence for the profession. Entrants to the Bar were arriving without the training the work required, and the real training was left to whatever chambers a young lawyer happened to join.
What it recommended
More time. A longer course, taken full time, so that law is the student's occupation rather than an evening addition to one.
Real institutions. Libraries, accommodation, and above all a body of full time teachers, since a faculty is what makes everything else possible: supervision, tutorials, research and continuity.
Selective admission. The Commission was concerned about the number of students admitted to law relative to the capacity to teach them, which is the ancestor of the intake and infrastructure rules taught at chapter 170.
Better assessment. Assessment that tests more than recall, which is the ancestor of chapters 340 to 450.
And a link to the profession. Because the report was about judicial administration, its interest in education was always in what arrived at the courts, and its recommendations were meant to change that.
What happened to the recommendations
Some were eventually implemented through the Advocates Act 1961 and the Bar Council of India. Section 7(1)(h), taught at chapter 50, gives the Council the power to lay down standards, and the Rules made under it require full time faculty, library, infrastructure and a full time course.
Some were implemented much later and partially. The five year integrated course, chapter 90, is a response to the length problem, and the semester system to the assessment problem.
And the most important finding was still being repeated forty-four years later. That is the argument of the next chapter: the 184th Report of 2002 describes substantially the same defects, which tells a student something more useful than either report alone.
A worked example
Take the Commission's own method and apply it to a question in this paper.
The Fourteenth Law Commission Report
The Commission wanted to know whether the administration of justice was working. It did not begin by reading the Civil Procedure Code. It issued a questionnaire, took evidence from witnesses across the country, and formed a picture of practice.
When it turned to legal education it did the same thing. Its findings are about libraries, class sizes and teachers, which are facts you can only get by asking.
Now notice what that makes the report. It is a legal survey in the sense of topic 4 and an empirical study in the sense of Module III, and its recommendations are law reform in the sense of chapter 710. A single document in this syllabus is an example of three of its topics at once, which is why it is worth knowing properly rather than as a name and a year.
Quick revision
The Fourteenth Report of the Law Commission of India, Reform of Judicial Administration, 1958, chaired by M.C. Setalvad, first Attorney General of India. Two volumes, civil and criminal.
Method: a long questionnaire and oral evidence from witnesses across the country, which makes it an example of empirical legal research.
Findings on legal education: inadequate libraries and accommodation, overcrowded classes, part-time practitioner teaching with too few full time teachers, a course too short and taken part-time, and a terminal written examination that tested recall.
Recommendations: a longer full time course, proper libraries and full time faculty, control of admissions relative to capacity, and better assessment.
Its afterlife: implemented in part through section 7(1)(h) of the Advocates Act 1961 and the Rules made under it, and largely repeated by the 184th Report in 2002.
Test yourself
1. Name the report, its subject, its year and its chairman. The Fourteenth Report of the Law Commission of India on the Reform of Judicial Administration, 1958, chaired by Shri M.C. Setalvad.
2. Why did a report on judicial administration examine legal education at all? Because the Commission was asking why the administration of justice was unsatisfactory, and one of its answers was the quality of the people entering the profession and the Bench, which is determined by legal education.
3. State four findings the report made about legal education. Inadequate libraries and accommodation; overcrowded classes; part-time teaching by practitioners with too few full time teachers; and a course that was too short and part-time, assessed by a single terminal written examination that tested memory.
4. What does it tell you that the 184th Report of 2002 makes substantially the same findings? That the defects are structural rather than incidental, and that the failure lies in implementation and in the absence of any definition of standards rather than in a want of diagnosis.
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.