Encouraging Interdisciplinary Learning at the NLUs

The following extract appears at pp. 98-100 of a report titled 'Suggestions for Reforms at the National Law Universities set up through State Legislations' which was submitted to the Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India in March 2018. It was based on surveys conducted among faculty members (33 respondents) and students (849 respondents) at 15 participating institutions in August-September 2016. I was one of the authors of this report. We welcome any feedback. 

The full text can be downloaded here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3171842. 

Encouraging Interdisciplinary Learning

... The element of integration between law and other disciplines is supposed to be central to the academic identity of the National Law Universities (NLUs). However, the experiences recounted by our respondents indicate numerous difficulties in the meaningful pursuit of interdisciplinary learning at these institutions ... The five-year integrated programmes do contain introductory courses in other disciplines, especially during the first two years of study. For example, the integrated B.A., LL.B. programme consists of introductory courses in History, Economics, Political Science, Sociology and English. Some NLUs have also included introductory courses in disciplines such as Philosophy and Psychology. Likewise, other variants of integrated law programmes such as B.B.A. LL.B., B.Com. LL.B. and B.Sc. LL.B. include introductory courses in the fields of business administration, commerce and science respectively. In the later stages of programmes which enable some curricular flexibility, optional courses can engage with topics that lie at the intersection of different disciplines. So in many ways the question of interdisciplinarity in the NLUs tends to be discussed by only examining how these courses are being delivered. However, that is a narrow approach to this question.

The broader approach would be to ask how the conceptual apparatus acquired from these disciplines is adding to the instruction of the prescribed law subjects. Likewise, is the teaching of the formal law subjects emphasising insights from the broader universe of the humanities and the social sciences? For example, the teaching of Indian Constitutional Law is predicated on some exposure to colonial legal history as well as the larger currents in political philosophy. The teaching of Corporate and Commercial Laws requires a functional understanding of macroeconomic trends. Likewise, the meaningful study of subjects such as Family Law and Criminal Law require a serious engagement with insights from Sociology and Anthropology. The knowledge of procedural laws such as Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure and the Law of Evidence is better absorbed alongside insights from Behavioural Psychology and Organisational Behaviour. The formal study of Environmental Laws requires engagement with ideas from the fields of Geography and Biology. These are only a few illustrations of the numerous possibilities in legal studies. The conscious cultivation of such interdisciplinary learning enables a better appreciation of the rationale behind different kinds of rule-making, their enforcement and the adjudication of disputes. They may also enable students to understand the limits of formal laws as a means of social control.

The entrenchment of these methods requires years of investment in curriculum development as well as careful coordination between teachers who are engaging different courses as part of an integrated programme. Implementing such a pedagogic approach has come up against several practical challenges. At many of the institutions covered by our study, teachers who are specifically engaged for humanities and social science courses felt that their views were not given due weightage when it came to decision-making about curriculum development and revision. Administrative positions are usually occupied by teachers who deliver formal law subjects and they are often not very receptive to suggestions for expanding the range of interdisciplinary offerings. In some cases, law teachers who have attempted to re-design their courses by bringing in perspectives from other disciplines have suffered in terms of their career advancement. This has happened where Selection Committees have preferred formalist methods of teaching based on the uncritical reading of legislative materials and judgments. 

Faculty members with interdisciplinary training have found it difficult to come within the textual interpretation of the applicable UGC Regulations which reward extended study in the same discipline. For example, an individual who holds a first degree in law (LL.B.) followed by a Ph.D. in Political Science is not going to be considered for an Assistant Professor position in Law despite having a good grasp of fields such as Constitutional Law and Administrative Law. In place of this individual, the rules will favour an individual who holds a second degree in law (LL.M.) and has qualified the UGC-NET but may not have yet completed a Ph.D. in Law. Similarly, an individual with advanced training in Economics may be better suited to teach subjects such as Company Law, Taxation Law and Banking Laws but she is unlikely to be considered above a candidate who holds a LL.M. and Ph.D. in these specific areas.

A teacher’s emphasis on interdisciplinary learning can also create confusion among students, especially during the early years of their studies. School-leaving students may not immediately understand the importance of integrating the elements of a liberal arts education in what is presumptively a programme that confers professional qualifications. However, these doubts can be easily dispelled through classroom instruction that patiently engages with the short-term anxieties of fee-paying students who are predisposed towards looking at their curriculum through the lens of its relevance for employment prospects.

Another problem that was highlighted in this regard was the high rate of attrition of teachers who are hired for teaching humanities and social sciences subjects. The general tendency is for many of them to leave when they get opportunities to work in larger university systems, since the latter offer networking benefits that arise from interacting with others in their respective fields. This is because the NLUs are largely being viewed as monodisciplinary institutions that are not enabling cross-fertilisation among different branches of knowledge. So we need to consider institutional strategies for attracting and retaining such individuals. One such strategy is the initiation of taught programmes and the facilitation of longitudinal research projects that have an interdisciplinary orientation.

In the recent past, a few NLUs have started offering full-time master’s programmes in disciplines other than law. For example, NALSAR Hyderabad started offering a M.B.A. programme in the academic year 2013-2014 while NLSIU Bangalore initiated a M.A. programme in Public Policy during the academic year 2014-2015. GNLU Gandhinagar has also started a M.B.A. programme in 2016-2017. These courses can both develop and benefit from synergies in faculty expertise and course offerings. However, these are examples of job-oriented courses which are primarily trying to attract fee-paying students. Hence, their eventual success is closely tied to whether the incoming students will get good recruitment opportunities. In contrast, now might be the right time to offer M.A. programmes that emphasize the links between law and other social sciences in order to advance the goals of knowledge production. These may attract graduates from other disciplines who are more likely than the graduates of the five-year integrated programmes to pursue research activities in the long-run. 

The NLUs should not take the postgraduate space for granted. Over the last few years, several innovative courses related to fields such as law, public policy and governance have been initiated by institutions such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai and Hyderabad), Azim Premji University (Bangalore), O.P. Jindal Global University (Sonipat), Ambedkar University Delhi (New Delhi) and the South Asian University (New Delhi). These are comparatively larger institutions with more financial resources to support research and they are consciously developing faculty expertise across several disciplines.

Suggested Readings: 

1. Upendra Baxi, 'Socio-Legal Research in India: A Programschrift', 24(2/3) Journal of Indian Law Institute 416-449 (1982). 
2. Jayanth K. Krishnan, 'Professor Kingfield goes to Delhi: American Academics, The Ford Foundation and the Development of Legal Education in India', 46 American Journal of Legal History 447-498 (2004). 
3. Upendra Baxi, 'Enculturing Law? Some Unphilosophic Remarks' in Mathew John & Sitharamam Kakarala (eds.), Enculturing Law: New Agendas for Legal Pedagogy (Tulika Books, 2007).   
4. Sitharamam Kakarala, 'Of Pedagogy and Suffering: Civil Rights Movements and Teaching of Human Rights in India' in Mathew John & Sitharamam Kakarala (eds.), Enculturing Law: New Agendas for Legal Pedagogy (Tulika Books, 2007).
5. Nehaluddin Ahmed, 'Adapting Indian Legal Education to the demands of a Globalizing World', 10 German Law Journal 847-857 (2008). 
6. Rukmini Sen, 'Teaching Sociology in a Law School: Predicaments, Negotiations and Innovations', 1 Journal of Indian Law and Society 37-57 (2009). 
7. Arpita Sengupta & Devrupa Rakshit, 'Modernization of Legal Education in India: The Interdisciplinary Approach to Education', 2(1) Asian Journal of Legal Education 57-66 (2015).