In search of uniform civil code

The subject of Uniform Civil Code is engaging the attention of society, the State and the people, particularly after the triple talaq judgment of the Supreme Court. The Law Commission of India has been directed to report on it. A group of 150 law students from a dozen leading law colleges in the country after a year-long study, research and drafting have produced a codified version of what could possibly be a Uniform Civil Code. This was made possible by teachers and management of Mar Gregorios College of Law, Thiruvananthapuram, which undertook a unique experiment of a national competition for law colleges on law reform for social justice.

The experiment, if institutionalised, can lead to revolutionary changes in the way law-in-society or law-in-development is understood, appreciated and taught in the country, towards maximizing justice in society. Given the state of legal education, the concept of a law reform competition is revolutionary in content and method, having the potential to teach/learn law in the context of socio-economic circumstances and the Constitutional goals set out for nation-building under the rule of law. The competition does help the student to learn many things by way of knowledge, skills, attitudes and ethics for making a professional, which are not available in the classroom. It can make social engineers out of lawyers who are capable of policy development, bridging the distance between law and justice. If the country is looking for transformational leaders for social justice and development, here is an idea which can transform legal education itself as justice education.

It is important to remind the legal profession that as doctors are concerned with health rather than disease, lawyers should be concerned with justice rather than conflicts and disputes. They must be able to make law according to justice instead of dispensing justice according to law. What is the responsibility of the profession if laws themselves are unjust? If today, society has more and more laws and less and less justice, how would lawyers explain the situation?
The beauty of the law reform competition as a teaching/learning tool is that it addresses many larger questions concerning law and justice in contemporary society, particularly in the context of the Constitutional vision of justice, social, economic and political for all citizens in the country.

The competition was  organized as an optional activity outside the regular curriculum in which groups of students (normally up to 20) select any aspect of family law that goes into the making of Uniform Civil Code. These include marriage, divorce, maintenance, custody and guardianship, adoption, inheritance and succession which are now governed by personal laws of the community to which one belongs. Students study in depth the prevailing law on the basis of religious texts and customs of each community – Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Parsees – as interpreted by courts and practised by the people.

On the basis of the study, the team formulates research questions, answers to which they gather from respective communities through observation/participation and interaction. The idea is to find out with empirical evidence why the law fails to deliver justice in the perception of beneficiaries and what they think should change for justice delivery.  With that feedback from communities, students examine a practice and propose changes to personal laws. The next part of the law reform exercise is intellectually challenging and organizationally difficult as students have to consolidate and codify modified personal laws in the form of a secular code that satisfies Constitutional demands of equality, dignity and gender justice while not doing violence to the guaranteed right to religion.

This is where future lawyers learn the art and science of policy planning in a plural democracy with guaranteed individual rights and drafting legislative proposals within the parameters of a written constitution. Doing such an exercise demands sound knowledge of behavioural sciences, balancing of rights and duties and understanding limits of law in social engineering. Integrated approach to problem solving is the key to constitutional governance under the rule of law. The objective of five-year integrated LLB programme of studying law in social context finds its fruition in the law reform competition.

Learning to link professions with people
Professional colleges have been striving to find new ways of teaching skills, attitudes and ethics that go to make a true professional. Skills training could successfully be imparted through clinical education practices and compulsory apprenticeship before licensing to practice. On the question of attitudes and ethics very little can be achieved through curricular programmes. This is true for professions of medicine, teaching and law. Respect for dignity, humanity and life and adherence to social values and professional ethics should become part of the personality of a doctor, teacher or lawyer, who deals with people all the time.
Professions are for the people and professionals should be sensitive to people’s problems, expectations and trust.

 This realization seems to have dawned on students, who worked in the law reform competition for almost a year and lived and interacted with communities seeking justice. As a person associated with law reform competition and subscribes to increasing social relevance of legal education, I recommend the final year of the LLB programme to be entirely devoted to experiential learning.
Every professional college should have a lawyer incubation clinic which should customize practical training programmes in the final year according to the career ethos of students. Litigation practice, corporate legal practice, community-based social justice lawyering, mediation and arbitration practice, civil and judicial services, teaching and research are some of the career options open to law graduates.

The optional curriculum for them will be accordingly prescribed and linked to the practical training plan. A compulsory three-month placement in a rural/tribal setting, learning access-to-justice issues of the local people, will instill a sense of social responsibility in all professionals even when they take up corporate practice. Hopefully, the National Education Policy now in the offing may provide space for innovation and experimentation in professional education and training so that professions become people-friendly and practitioners become more humane and service-minded.

‘Law is not logic alone but experience’

If it is so, there is no better substitute for learning law, except experimental learning. In England in earlier times lawyers were made not by attending classes in a university, but by participating in activities in lawyer organisations called, "Inns of Court". By observation, study, reflection and imitation under supervision, the lawyer aspirant learnt the knowledge and skills that made a barrister. When universities and colleges began to teach law, skills were learnt through simulation exercises and role plays as well as compulsory apprenticeship in a law office before admission to the bar. Unfortunately, apprenticeship was dropped and lawyers were left to learn skills through trial and error on the job.

Ethics and professionalism were causalities in the process. The profession got crowded with "fake lawyers" as the Bar Council chairman himself conceded in public. The litigant public has been at the receiving end of this situation which, Mr. M. C. Setalvad once described as "half-baked lawyers let loose as social parasites by ill-equipped law colleges". The situation has considerably improved since the introduction of the five-year integrated LLB programme and the establishment of national law schools in the 1980s. But, as a former Prime Minister said, the reform helped only to create "a few islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity".

(Prof. Menon is a legal educator and presently Hony. Director of the Bar Council of Kerala M K Nambyar Academy of Continuing Legal Education, Kochi)