The introduction of the one-year Master of Laws (LLM) has been
touted as a game changer for post-graduate legal education in India. This
paper argues that, despite the unclear rationale for the course and the
hastily put together course structure, the one-year LLM may transform
post-graduate legal education if rigorous intellectual effort is invested in
the process of translating the curriculum into active learning materials
allowing for a critical pedagogy to emerge in the classroom. Using the Law
and Social Transformation course in the two-year LLM as an example,
the paper shows that despite a well designed curriculum, the syllabi and
textbooks developed subsequently effectively neuter the objectives of the
course. The new decentralized institutional environment for the development of the one-year LLM, with the emergence of new private Universities taking the lead with course development, offers hope that the promise of the one-year LLM will be realized.
Access the paper here.