Vol. 17, Part II · pages 31–35

8 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES what sort of Legal Education should be given so as to produce an efficient lawyer is a purely educational question and must be settled by the Educationist without being influenced by what might ultimately happens if the number who took to law as a profession was so great that it exceeded the point of saturation. Another distinction which I think must be made is this : the question of Legal Education has no inherent connection with the question whether the Institutions charged with legal instruction should be whole-time or part-time. It is possible to conceive and to frame a system of legal education tolerably good and easily workable with a Law School or a Law College working part-time. With these preliminary observation, I address myself to the considerations of the problem of reform of legal education. There are four questions that emerge for consideration :– 1. At what stage of his education student should be permitted to commence his study of Laws ? 2. What should be the period for a complete course of legal education ? 3. What subjects should be curriculum for a complete course of legal education include ? 4. How should the Law College be organised so that the curriculum prescribed is dealt with in the most efficient manner ? Question No. 3 seems to me to be pivotal. On a correct answer to this question depends the solution of the remaining three questions. The best approach to the subject is furnished by the reports made from time to time by the Examiners appointed by the Bombay University at the LL.B. Examination containing the impressions formed by them of the work of candidates. The perusal of these reports will show that the examiners have along emphasised the following defects in the work of the examinees. 1. The absence of any indication of a correct understanding of the fundamental principles underlying the laws which he is required to study. 2. Absence of any grounding in general knowledge. 3. Want of orderly presentment of the subject ? 4. Absence of any sense of relevancy of the answer given to the question asked. 5. Absence of any sense of precision in stating facts, arguments and opinions.

9THOUGHTS ON . . . . . . . . . BOMBAY PRESIDENCY 6. Inability to express in clear language what the student has in his mind. These are undoubtedly very serious defects in a student of Law and something must be done to remove them. How can these defects be removed ? We must first of all understand what these defects are due to. In my opinion these defects are due to two things, viz. a faulty curriculum and a faulty method of instruction. From the educationist’s point of view the study of Law requires a study of certain other auxiliary subjects without which the study of Law alone would be incomplete equipment for the practice of the Profession. What these auxiliary subjects should be will not be difficult to enumerate if we remember that a lawyer must have a legal mind. In the opinion of a keen observer whom Augustine Birrell quotes approvingly in his Obiter Dicta, a legal mind chiefly displays itself by illustrating the obvious, explaining the evident and explatiating on the common place. Disregarding for the moment, the quip conveyed in the observation, I think it contains an important bit of truth in so far as it suggests what the real business of a lawyer is. According to the observation, the business of a lawyer is to argue. So important a part does argument play in a lawyer’s business that I am prepared to say that argument is the summum bonum of a lawyer’s being. The essential requisites for the development of the argumentative ability are : a. A knowledge of the individual and how he functions in society. b. A knowledge of the working of the human mind. c. A mind trained to drawing logical inferences. In addition to those fundamental requirements of argumentative ability, there are other requisites, purely ornamental but none-the-less necessary, of grace of language and of orderly presentment. To put it in concrete terms, a lawyer’s training apart from the study of law must include the study of the following subjects: (1) Sociology, (2) Psychology, (3) Logic, (4) Rhetoric and the art of public speaking, and (5) Command over language. None of these subjects form a part of the present curriculum of the Law course. The first step, therefore, is to reform the curriculum and to see that these subjects are included in it.

10 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES If the curriculum is expanded in the way suggested, then it seems to me that the one and the only answer to the second question namely what should be the period for a complete course of legal education is that it cannot be a two years’ course as it is now. It must be more than two years. What exactly should the period be is a question on which there might be a difference of opinion. In my view, the period should be four years. I would divide this course of four years into two periods each of two years. At the end of the first two years, there is to be an examination to be held either by the University or by some other body appointed for the purpose, which examination to be called the First LL.B. Exmination. At the end of second two year’s period, there is to be another examination held by the same authority and to be called the second LL.B. examination. I will next deal with the question of dividing the curriculum between the first LL.B. and the Second LL.B. under my scheme. The course of the First LL.B. should include the following subjects :– 1. Sociology and Psychology. 2. Logic and Rhetoric. 3. English. 4. Law of Contracts. 5. Legal Philosophy and Legal Maxims. 6. Constitutional Law. 7. Government of India Acts. 8. Law of Crimes and Criminal Procedure. The Course for the second LL.B. will include the course of study now prescribed for the First and the Second LL.B; minus Constitutional Law, the Government of India Acts, the Law of Crimes and Criminal Procedure and Contract which are under my scheme transferred to the First LL.B. I would, however, like to add the following Acts to the curriculum of the second LL.B. :– (1) Provincial and Presidency Small Cause Court Acts, and (2) Bombay Civil Courts Act. I am not in favour of omitting the study of Civil and Criminal Procedures as is suggested in some quarters from the course of Collegiate studies especially as under my scheme there would be ample time for their study. Having given my views on the questions relating to the course of studies and the period of studies, I take the consideration of the

11THOUGHTS ON . . . . . . . . . BOMBAY PRESIDENCY first question, namely, at what stage of his education, a student may be permitted to commence his study of law. I have no hesitation in saying that it should begin immediately after he passes his matriculation. I am driven to this conclusion by my inability to answer satisfactorily to myself the following two questions :– (1) Why should the study of law be regarded as a postgraduate study. (2) Does the undergraduate curriculum gone through by a boy in an Arts College gives him the training which is necessary as a preliminary for making him an efficient lawyer and the want of which has been a matter of constant complaint by the Examiners. With regard to the first question, it may be pointed out that in the Bombay University no Degree in any Scientific subject, such as Engineering, Medicine, Chemistry and Physics is treated as a postgraduate Degree requiring the passing of the B.A. as a condition precedent for being admitted to the Degree Course. Why Law alone should be treated as an exception, I can see no good ground for justification. Secondly, what the boy studies during his four years in an Arts College for obtaining B.A. Degree. Ex-Hypothesis has been found as of no material benefit to him in the study of Law. It is the consideration of the matter from this point of view which has forced me, as I have said, to come to the conclusion that Law should not be treated as a post-graduate study but should be treated as a graduate study commencing right after the matriculation. There is nothing so inherently or particularly good in the present-day graduate course of the Bombay University which can be said to add to the make-up of a good lawyer as to compel us to hold that it must be a necessary prerequisite for the commencement of the study of Law. I may mention in passing that the Barrister’s course is not a post-graduate course. There is a view that a student may be permitted to take to legal studies after the Intermediate. The suggestion is a good one in so far as it implies a return to the old system when law was not regarded

12 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES as a post-graduate study. Nonetheless in my view to adopt this suggestion would be a mistake and for two reasons. Experience has shown that a B. A. is not good enough. With this experience behind us, it seems to me somewhat odd to think that if we descend to the lower and inferior strata of the Intermediate, we could turn out a more finished product from the Law College than we do now when we draw our raw material from the higher and better strata of the B.A. If B.A. is not good enough, I cannot understand how it can possibly be maintained that the Intermediate would be better. Secondly, why leave the boy even though it be for two years in the hands of an Arts College which does not give him the preliminary training necessary for Law. If the boy is deficient in his preliminary training, why not take him in your own hands from the very commencement and give him the training? Why send him for two years to an Arts College which does not profess to give a course of instruction designed for the ultimate benefit of a lawyer ? I see three distinct advantages in my proposal of allowing a student to commence the study of law immediately after the Matriculation : 1. The first advantage to which I attach the greatest value is this. At present, a student who joins the Law Course has not the fixed objective of studying law for the purpose of qualifying himself for the profession. He comes there merely for the purpose of adding one more string to his bow. It is his last refuge to which he may or may not go for shelter. Probably, he comes to the Law College because he is unemployed and does not know for the moment what to do. Due to this unsteadiness in purpose, there is no seriousness in the Law student and that is why his study of Law is so haphazard. It is, therefore, necessary to compel him to stick to it. A boy, who is a B.A., cannot have this fixity of purpose, because as a B.A. he has other opportunities in life open to him. My scheme has the advantage of compelling the boy to make his choice at the earliest