NLU Jodhpur’s Trade Law and Development ranked No1 in India by Washington & Lee University

National Law University, Jodhpur’s (NLUJ) journal Trade Law & Development (TL&D) has recently been ranked as the No.1 journal published by Indian law schools across all subjects. The said ranking has been arrived at by the Washington & Lee University School of Law..Over an e-mail interview, TL&D’s co-Editors-in-Chief Prateek Bhattacharya and Jayant Raghu Ram (pictured below), spoke to Bar & Bench about the origins of TL&D, the difficulties Indian journals face and the importance of academic research..Bar & Bench: So how does this Washington & Lee University ranking system work?.Prateek Bhattacharya & Jayant Raghu Ram: The Washington & Lee University, School of Law has a very detailed ranking system for Universities as well as for law reviews. We had gotten ourselvesregistered with them in 2009. I believe they rank law reviews on the basis of how often they are cited. In their words: “the impact-factor weighting determines the proportionality between impact-factor and total cites which comprise the combined-score calculation for each ranked journal”. Using their methodology, we are currently ranked 8th among student edited law journals emphasizing on international trade law, and 15th among ALL international trade law journals. We are also ranked 1st in India amongst all Indian law reviews..Bar & Bench: Tell us more about TL&D. When was it founded?.PB & JR: As you would find on the home page of our website, TL&D aims at generating healthy academic debate and exploring pertinent issues of international law and international economic law with a developmental perspective in mind. The journal’s inception was in 2009, with our first issue being published in July 2009. It was founded by Shashank P. Kumar, who was then just beginning his fifth year at NLUJ. The credit for the journal’s establishment, and for the first few articles, all goes to Shashank, who almost single-handedly managed the journal, with a little help from the administration and, of course, from the rest of us..Bar & Bench: What were the initial goals of the journal?.PB & JR: Shashank’s idea behind the journal was two-fold – First, to have a good law review in India which deals with issues of International Trade Law and International Economic Law (particularly from a developmental perspective). Second, to have NLUJ (and India) produce a law journal which matches the standards of international law reviews. You will find that our journal has received much acclaim and praise among the international trade law community in the last three years, and has been recently mentioned on the WTO website as well. TL&D publishes two issues each academic year – Summer & Winter (previously Spring & Fall). We have set a tradition of having each Summer issue as a special issue themed on a particular topical area of International Economic Law..Bar & Bench: What have the Summer Special issues covered thus far?.PB & JR: TL&D’s first special issue was themed on International Investment Law, with Manu Sanan serving as Issue Editor. The second was on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), a theme which is very close at heart to the journal’s own ideology, with Meghana Sharafudeen serving as Issue Editor. We selected Dispute Settlement at the WTO as the theme for the third special issue for the following reasons: First, after a very niche topic such as TWAIL, we wanted to deal with a more widely discussed topic. Second, with the advent of several cases involving China at the WTO, the issue of developmental perspectives in WTO Dispute Settlement has becoming increasingly important. In fact, many developing countries have suggested several reforms/amendments to the WTO DSU in order to make it developing country friendly. Keeping these two factors in mind, as well as the editors’ own interest in the topic, we decided upon Dispute Settlement at the WTO..Bar & Bench: What are some of the challenges involved in editing and publishing TL&D?.PB & JR: One of TL&D’s main challenges is getting quality articles from Indian law students. First, the number of submissions which we get from Indian students is very frugal. Second, most of thesesubmissions fall below our expectations in terms of content and structure of the articles. We believe that the problem lies with the regular Indian student’s idea and standard for an article/essay. Most submit their class projects/assignments as articles, some of which are plagiarized, or being very general and much too simplistic. In addition, many students may not realize that most recruiters (especially from foreign law firms) and foreign Universities (for those pursuing an LL.M.) rely heavily on good quality publications to adjudge a student’s idea, originality and research skills. We think that the problem lies with the fact that the Indian legal community is yet to catch up with the culture of acknowledging the importance of academic scholarship, unlike in Europe, North America, and even certain Asian countries such as China, Singapore and Japan. In this regard, TL&D has tried pro-actively to invite articles for publication from Indian law schools. However, we have often been dissatisfied with most of the submissions we receive from Indian law students..Another serious problem that we face pertains to articles which we have specifically solicited from well-known authors. At times, these authors who have been invited to write for the journal either withdraw their commitment at the last moment, or submit an article which is not of the quality expected of them. We feel that this may be because we are a journal based in India..Bar & Bench: Any other problems or obstacles you face?.PB & JR: Other challenges we face are with regard to outreach and trying to make the journal more popular. Though some of our content is of a better quality than other international law reviews, the fact that we are from India, and that we are very new often works against us. Lastly, although our University administration is extremely supportive when it comes to Journal finances, we have found that we receive very few subscriptions for the print copies. This may be partly attributed to the fact that the journal is freely available online. However, I know of many institutions which prefer print copies of journals, but who haven’t contacted us yet for subscriptions.