Globalisation impacts legal education in India

Aligarh, Aug (IANS): Faizan Mustafa, vice chancellor of the NALSAR (National Academy of Legal Sciences and Research) University of Law, Hyderabad, said globalisation was having an impact on legal education, changing the earlier state-centric approach.

Today, we have to look at the market too, to understand the relationship between law and the state, Mustafa said, while delivering the Extra Mural Lecture on Globalisation and Third Generation Reforms in Legal Education at Aligarh Muslim University Saturday.

Transnational laws such as International Monetary Fund rules, laws of the World Trade Organisation and International Financial Regulations have become more important these days than the laws enacted by sovereign parliaments, Mustafa said.

Paying rich tributes to his own teachers in the Law Faculty of Aligarh Muslim University, Mustafa said several leaders of legal education emerged from there.

As many as eight vice chancellors of the National Law Universities were products of Aligarh Muslim University, Mustafa said, claiming that no other university held this distinction.

Mustafa urged the Aligarh Muslim University to introduce changes in the curriculum followed for legal studies, to be in step with the realities of free trade and globalisation.

He also urged that new courses be introduced, integrating disciplines, so that the close relationship between business, the natural sciences and law is reflected in syllabi.

Mustafa also questioned why the master's course in law in India is two years long, when outside the Indian subcontinent, it is usually a one-year programme.