The Lifeworld of Law: Methodological Multiplicity in Legal Pedagogy

Abstract

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.