Battles Around Legal Education Reform in India

Abstract

Abstract This chapter covers battles around legal education reform in India. Such battles have long played a strategic role in law and development efforts around the world whether promoted from abroad or from local importers. The chapter employs the theoretical concept of a “legal revolution” developed by Harold Berman in his famous books on law and revolution. Berman highlighted how the learned capital of relatively marginal scholarly groups is linked with emerging political movements. The theoretical approach illuminates the so far relatively unsuccessful efforts of Indian legal modernists—who draw on US and global law firm approaches—to challenge the entrenched power of a very conservative Indian legal elite embodied in the senior advocates and high court judiciaries. Corporate law firms, think tanks, and especially new private and public law schools have in part taken up the challenge, relying on a reinvestment in globally-inspired legal scholarship and technology, but so far have not been able to modernize the grand advocates, who rely more on familial capital than scholarly and meritocratic capital. The grand advocates are essential for major cases, control the governance of the National Law Schools, and, with a few notable exceptions, resist the modernization inspired from abroad.