NLU students must not look down upon students from other law schools: CJI DY Chandrachud

Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Saturday flagged what he termed a false sense of entitlement prevalent among students of National Law Universities (NLUs)..The CJI said that students from NLUs should not look down upon students from other law colleges and NLUs should not work in isolation. "The outlook of legal education must be to improve law colleges across the country and not just few. The sense of entitlement that NLUs are better than other institutions leads to unnecessary wastage of energy. NLUs ought not work in field of isolation and the students (from NLUs) must not look down upon students from other law schools," the CJI said.He was delivering the keynote address at the convocation ceremony of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad, one of the 24 NLUs in the country..The CJI in his speech highlighted the importance of creating empathy so that discrimination in campus towards students from marginalised communities, particularly dalit and adivasi students, can be weeded out."Promoting empathy is the first step which educational institutions should take and it can end the culture of elitism and exclusion... Empathy is not a personal attribute but require institutional change; people who come to courts are not just names on case dockets but also has individual struggles, which we seek to see," he opined. He said that one of the first step towards ending the same would be to stop allotment of hostel rooms based on marks secured in entrance exam."It can start with ending allotment of hostels on basis of entrance marks which leads to caste based segregation," he said.He also said practices like putting out a list of marks obtained by students along with social categories, asking for marks of dalit and adivasi students publicly to humiliate them, making mockery of their proficiency in English and labelling them as inefficient, should end."By reshaping legal educational model we can create empathy and weed out structural inequalities," he added.He also touched upon the role of technology and platform like YouTube are playing in shaping legal discourse and educating masses about law."Now we see a lot of YouTube channels producing videos on legal concepts in simplified forms, YouTube is the new platform in law as is elsewhere. the number of views on these videos show the level of curiosity which our citizens have towards the legal discourse," he said.The CJI underscored that it the job of legal fraternity to make citizens aware of our laws and technology can take law to masses so that it is not an elite concept any longer.Hence, he batted for making teaching of resources publicly available online even if the students are not enrolled in the law school.In this regard, he implored NALSAR to share its educational videos to not just its own students. "Therefore, I would beseech NALSAR like other law schools to ensure that videos of quality legal education which you provide to your own law students do not become a shared monopoly of your students alone and is disseminated across the nation," the CJI stated..Read what CJI DY Chandrachud said about student suicides here. [Follow our live-coverage of the event]