BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 1 English 1 February 2026 - 60/40 Question Paper with Solutions

The speaker is Shylock, in the trial scene of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (Act IV, Scene i), refusing Portia's appeal that he accept payment and show mercy.

Perjury here means the sin of breaking a solemn oath sworn before God. Shylock has sworn in heaven to have the forfeit of his bond, and he argues that to accept money instead would be to forswear himself; not for the whole city of Venice will he take that guilt upon his soul.

The children were changed by Roxy, a slave in the household of Percy Driscoll and the mother of one of the two infants, in Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson.

Their true identity was discovered by David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson, the lawyer, who compared the fingerprints he had taken of both children in infancy with those of the two young men twenty-three years later and found that each was living under the other's name.

Answer: These men are innocent, aren't they?

The rule applied: a positive statement takes a negative tag. The verb are is itself an auxiliary, so it is repeated in the tag as are not, contracted to aren't; and the subject these men becomes the pronoun they.

2. The annihilation of caste. No new order is possible while society is organised in a graded hierarchy of birth. Ambedkar's argument was that caste is not merely a division of labour but a division of labourers, arranged in an ascending order of reverence and a descending order of contempt, and that it destroys fellow-feeling at the root.

3. Social and economic democracy, not merely political democracy. This is his central contention. On 26 January 1950, he warned, India would enter a life of contradictions: equality in politics and inequality in social and economic life, one man one vote alongside a denial of equal worth. A New Social Order requires that the contradiction be removed, or those denied equality will "blow up the structure of political democracy".

4. Democracy as a way of living, not a form of government. He defined it as "a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience", a society in which people meet as equals in ordinary life, not merely at the ballot box.

5. Constitutional morality. Forms alone are not enough. A constitution works only if those who operate it observe the spirit of its restraints, and Ambedkar warned that constitutional morality is "not a natural sentiment" in India but has to be cultivated.

The text

The answer comes from Francis Bacon's essay "Of Judicature" (from the Essays, final edition 1625). Bacon was himself Lord Chancellor of England, and the essay is a working statement of judicial duty by a man who had sat in the office.

His central proposition

"Judges ought to remember that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law."

This is the foundation of the essay. The judge's function is to declare the law, not to create it.

The functions and duties he lays down

1. To interpret, not to legislate. A judge who makes law usurps the function of the sovereign and unsettles the certainty on which subjects rely.

7. To temper severity with mercy, and to remember that a harsh judgment may be a greater injury than the wrong it punishes: "judges ought above all to remember the conclusion of the Roman Twelve Tables, salus populi suprema lex", the welfare of the people is the supreme law.

8. To maintain the dignity of the court, including the conduct of officers, clerks and ministers, since corruption below the bench discredits the bench itself.

9. To keep the relation with the sovereign and the other estates in balance, so that the courts remain the "lions under the throne": powerful, but not opposed to the sovereign authority.

2. The Anthem arrives when it is not sought. Standing outside a quiet old church at night, Soapy hears the organ playing an anthem he had known as a boy. It brings back his mother, roses, ambitions, friends and clean thoughts, and it produces in a moment what a day of scheming could not: he resolves to reclaim his life, find work and be a man again.

3. The two meet in the final line, and the order is reversed. At the very instant of his resolution the Cop finally appears, arrests him for loitering, and the magistrate sends him to Blackwell's Island for three months. He gets the Cop only after the Anthem has made him no longer want it.

The significance

1. It states the story's structure. The title is a pairing, and the story is built on the collision of the pair. Neither word makes sense in the story without the other.

2. It contrasts external law with internal reform. The Cop punishes conduct; the Anthem changes the man. O. Henry's arrangement makes the point that the second is the more powerful and the first the more arbitrary.

Who he is

John Franting is the victim in Arnold Bennett's short story "Murder!", and the man whose character supplies the motive for the crime. He is set in deliberate contrast with Lomax Harder, the mild poet who kills him.

His qualities

1. Physically formidable. Franting is an athlete: a dozen years earlier he had been perhaps the finest amateur boxer in England, and he bewildered his opponents by being left-handed. Bennett makes his physical dominance a fact about him before making it a fact about the plot.

2. Brutal and domineering. He is a bully by temperament, accustomed to getting his way by force of personality where force of fist is not available. His manner towards those weaker than himself is contemptuous.

3. Insensitive and coarse. Where Harder is refined and inward, Franting is loud, worldly and blunt. He has no interest in the things Harder values and no capacity to understand a man like him.

I am a first-year student of the five-year B.L.S. LL.B. programme at ____ Law College, Mumbai. My coursework in Legal Method, Legal Language and Economics has given me a foundation in contract principles, legal research and drafting, and I have completed a certificate course in commercial contract drafting. During a two-week observation at the chambers of Adv. ____ I assisted with due-diligence checklists and case summaries, and I am familiar with SCC Online, Manupatra and MS Office.

A multinational environment would let me see how legal risk is managed inside a business rather than only in litigation, which is the area I hope to build a career in. I am available for eight weeks from 1 May 2026 and can work from your Mumbai office.

My bio-data is attached for your kind consideration, and I would be glad to appear for an interview at your convenience.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,
Priya Sharma

Encl.: Bio-data

Declaration: I hereby declare that the information furnished above is true to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Place: Mumbai
Date: 21 February 2026 Priya Sharma

The municipal refuse bin at the junction of Lakeview Road and Hiranandani Link Road has not been cleared since 1 February 2026. Waste has now accumulated well beyond the bin and spread across the footpath, obstructing pedestrians and forcing schoolchildren to walk on the carriageway. The heap includes household and food waste, which in the present weather has begun to decompose, and the smell is severe enough that residents of the adjoining buildings cannot open their windows.

The consequences are not merely a nuisance. The site has attracted stray dogs and a visible population of rats, and stagnant water in the discarded containers is breeding mosquitoes. Two households in our building have reported cases of dengue this month. Uncollected waste of this kind is a direct risk to public health and a breach of the Corporation's obligation to provide for the collection and disposal of solid waste.

I therefore request you kindly to (i) arrange for the immediate clearance of the accumulated waste and disinfection of the site, (ii) restore the regular collection schedule for this lane, and (iii) inform us of the officer responsible so that further lapses can be reported directly.

4. It creates livelihoods. Small businesses reach customers without a shopfront, and an entire creator economy now exists.

5. It holds power to account. Official negligence photographed and posted has produced action that formal complaints did not, and the reach of a single post can be greater than that of a newspaper.

The case for bane

1. Misinformation spreads faster than correction. A false message forwarded a million times cannot be recalled, and rumour circulated on messaging platforms has led to real violence in India.

2. It damages mental health. Constant comparison, the pursuit of validation and addictive design are linked to anxiety and depression, particularly among adolescents.

3. Privacy is surrendered without being noticed. The business model is the collection and sale of attention and personal data.

4. It enables harassment. Trolling, doxxing, stalking and the circulation of obscene material fall hardest on women.

Conclusion

Social media is a tool, and its character is decided by use and regulation rather than by the technology itself. The same platform that spreads a rumour spreads the correction; the same reach that enables harassment enables accountability. The realistic position is neither to celebrate nor to condemn it, but to insist on three things: digital literacy for users, transparency and accountability from platforms, and regulation that restrains harm without licensing censorship. The last is the hardest, and it is the one a law student will spend a career arguing about.

Second, its central moral idea is stated simply enough to carry. Atticus tells Scout that you never really understand a person until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. That is empathy expressed as a practical instruction, and it is the whole of what a lawyer needs before argument begins.

Third, the narration is a technical achievement. The story is told by an adult remembering herself as a child, so the reader understands things the narrator did not understand at the time. The device lets Harper Lee show prejudice through the eyes of someone who has not yet learned it.

A criticism. The novel has been fairly criticised for telling a story about racial injustice largely through white characters, with Tom Robinson given little voice of his own. That is a real limitation and worth acknowledging; it does not cancel the book's value, but it places it.

Conclusion. I return to it because it is honest about failure. It says that doing the right thing is not the same as winning, and that the two must not be confused. For anyone entering the law that is a more useful preparation than any account of a famous victory.

The facts

A Time to Kill (1989), John Grisham's first novel, is set in Ford County, Mississippi. Carl Lee Hailey, a black millworker, has a ten-year-old daughter, Tonya, who is abducted and brutally assaulted by two white men. Believing that a local jury will never convict them, Carl Lee shoots both men in the courthouse as they are brought from a hearing. He is charged with capital murder, and Jake Brigance, a young white lawyer of the town, defends him.

1. He takes the case

The first contribution is the largest. The fee is negligible, the case looks unwinnable, and taking it will cost Jake his safety, his practice and nearly his family. He takes it because Carl Lee had asked him beforehand what he would do if it were his own daughter, and Jake knew the answer. A defendant nobody will defend has no rights at all, and Jake supplies that first.

4. He fights the procedural ground

He moves for a change of venue, arguing that an impartial jury cannot be found in a county saturated by the case; the motion is refused. He contests the jury's composition and works within the selection process to seat jurors who might listen. Throughout he faces District Attorney Rufus Buckley, an able and politically ambitious prosecutor.

5. He does not stop

The trial attracts organised racist violence: threats to the jury, an attempt on Jake's life, and the burning of his house. He sends his wife and daughter away and continues. Justice for Carl Lee depended on his lawyer simply refusing to be frightened off.

6. The closing argument

Jake abandons legal argument almost entirely. He asks the jurors to close their eyes while he narrates plainly what was done to the child, and then asks them to imagine one thing further: that the little girl was white.

It is not a submission of law. It is an invitation to notice the double standard they have lived inside. The jury returns not guilty by reason of insanity.

Introduction

The trial scene of The Merchant of Venice (Act IV, Scene i) brings to a head a conflict that has been building through the whole play. Antonio, a Venetian merchant, has forfeited a bond to Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, and the penalty named in it is a pound of his flesh. The scene is a courtroom drama, but the quarrel it resolves is not really about money.

1. The roots of the conflict, before the trial

Commercial. Antonio lends money without interest, which undercuts Shylock's trade. Shylock says so plainly: Antonio "lends out money gratis and brings down the rate of usance here in Venice."

Religious and personal. Antonio has spat on Shylock's gaberdine, called him a dog, and abused him publicly on the Rialto. Shylock recalls it in detail, and Antonio does not deny it; he says he is as likely to do it again.

3. The turn

Portia concedes that the bond is forfeit and the law allows the claim, and then defeats it on the words themselves: the bond grants flesh but no blood, and not "one jot" more or less than a pound. Shylock, having insisted on the letter, is destroyed by the letter.

She then produces the alien statute: an alien who seeks the life of a Venetian citizen forfeits half his goods to the intended victim and half to the State, and his life lies at the Duke's mercy.

4. The judgment, and Antonio's part in it

The Duke spares Shylock's life. Antonio's terms are that Shylock make over his property to Jessica and Lorenzo at his death, and that he become a Christian. These are presented as mercy, and the conversion in particular is a penalty aimed at the one thing that makes Shylock who he is. Shylock leaves the court with the words "I am not well", and does not appear again in the play.

The text

"The Joy of Reading" is Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's essay on books and what they did for him. It is partly memoir and partly an argument addressed to Indian families, and the idea of the home library is its practical centre.

1. What he means by a home library

Not a grand room with glass cases. Kalam means a shelf of books in an ordinary house, chosen by the family, available to the children without permission being asked. His point is that the books must be in the home, within reach, and not confined to a school or a public library visited occasionally.

2. Why he thinks every home should have one

a. A book at hand is read; a book elsewhere is not. Children read what is lying about. Availability, not exhortation, is what produces readers.

b. It builds the habit early, when it can still be built. A child who grows up among books treats reading as ordinary rather than as a task set by a teacher.

3. His own experience, which is the argument's proof

Kalam describes the books that formed him, and the essay is generous with names. He speaks of the volumes he cherished, among them Alexis Carrel's Man the Unknown, the work of a doctor turned philosopher and Nobel Laureate, which shaped his thinking about the human being as more than a physical mechanism. He records his debt to the personal library of his teacher and to those who lent him books when he could not buy them.

He also tells the stories of people transformed by reading, which he uses as evidence rather than decoration: the account of V. Kathiresan, and elsewhere of Steven, individuals whose direction in life was changed by what they read in their own time and at their own expense of effort.

4. What he urges

Kalam's practical appeal is direct: every home should have a library, however small; parents should read in front of their children; and books should be given as gifts. He believed that a nation's development is decided by what its children read, and that a home library is the smallest unit at which that can be acted upon.

The setting

In Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), set in Dawson's Landing, Missouri, the lawyer David Wilson has been nicknamed "Pudd'nhead" for a joke the town failed to understand, and has had no practice for over twenty years. He passes the time with two hobbies the town regards as proof of his foolishness: an almanac of epigrams, and a collection of fingerprints taken on glass slides, dated and labelled, of nearly everyone in the town, gathered over more than two decades.

The case

Judge York Driscoll is killed during a robbery at his home. Suspicion falls on the visiting Italian twins, Luigi and Angelo Capello, found near the body with the weapon, a knife belonging to them. Feeling in the town runs against them and they stand trial. Wilson appears for the defence. The real culprit is Tom Driscoll, the Judge's nephew and heir, in truth Valet de Chambre, the son of the slave Roxy, exchanged in the cradle twenty-three years earlier.

6. The cradle records, and the second revelation. His collection includes prints of the two infants. Comparing childhood prints with adult ones, he shows that the man known as Tom Driscoll carries the prints recorded for the slave child and "Chambers" those of the heir, and announces that the children were exchanged at some months old and that the killer is in the room. Tom collapses and confesses.

The outcome

The twins are acquitted. Tom is convicted. The real heir is restored to the name and estate though fitted for neither, having been raised in slavery. Tom, now identified as a slave and therefore as property, is sold down the river by the estate's creditors, because as a chattel his value belongs to them rather than to the criminal law. Wilson is at last vindicated and is elected mayor.

Conclusion

Wilson wins by producing physical, objective evidence in a town that has settled everything by rumour and appearance for twenty-three years. He does not out-argue the prosecution; he produces a fact argument cannot touch, and the same fact answers two questions at once: who killed the Judge, and who these two young men actually are.