Legal education's vernacular challenge

Despite government's push for regional languages in legal education, law schools grapple with faculty diversity, resource constraints and concerns over students' future employability

- Shradha Chettri

Addressing an event on December 18, 2024, the union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan had said, "Soon Indian languages will be the court language. A time will come when a lawyer will be able to fight a court case in Punjabi in the Supreme Court. With the use of technology Supreme Court judges will be able to translate them."

Over the years, several Supreme Court judges, including the present Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and former CJI DY Chandrachud, have stressed on the need to impart legal education in regional languages. But as of now, for all law schools, the medium of instruction is English; it is also the lingua franca of all higher courts.

Educators say the vision may be noble but highlight several challenges that will make teaching law in regional languages difficult.

Law school diversity

The premier law institutes the National Law Universities (NLUS) - admit students from across the country through the national-level Common Law Admission Test (CLAT).

Ved Kumari, vice chancellor of NLU Odisha, explained, "First, our institutions do not have language-based admission. I have students from different states. Each state has its own language, so in how many languages will I run the courses? I am based in Odisha and Odia is the local language so at the max I can teach English or Odia.

But then what will people from other states do?" Kumari, who had been the dean of Delhi University's Law Faculty, added: "When in north India, people wanted us to teach in Hindi, but students from the northeast couldn't understand Hindi.

In this situation it was always easier to teach in English." Teachers from diverse linguistic backgrounds will face the same problems. Educators raise questions about the logistics of training them.