Md Abdur Razzak
Albeit started the journey as a public university in 2005, Jagannath University (JnU), as an academic institution, holds a long glorious history of 150 years that dates back to 1858. At present it has 33 departments under the aegis of seven distinctive faculties. In response to the upward demand of legal education in Bangladesh, Jagannath University opened its Law Department in the year 2009.
Professor Dr Sarkar Ali Akkas, a veteran in the arena of legal education of Bangladesh, was appointed as the first chairperson of the Law Department. Initially, he was accompanied by three young and popular law teachers, namely, SM Masum Billah, Shafiqur Rahman Khan and Christine Richardson. Among them, presently, the two faculty members, SM Masum Billah and Shafiqur Rahman Khan, are pursuing their PhD studies in New Zealand and Australia respectively.
Embarked on a solid intellectual foundation with the aim of transforming the legal education in Bangladesh, the Department of Law began offering four-year LLB (Hon’s) program from 2008-2009 academic session while one-year LLM program was introduced in 2012-2013 session. Later on, it introduced Mphil and PhD programs in the year 2012. In the same year, Department of Law was placed under the Faculty of Law. Earlier, it was functioning under the auspices of the Faculty of Arts. Professor Dr Sarkar Ali Akkas is currently serving as the Dean of the Jagannath Univesity Law Faculty.
The young department, at the very outset, was run by only four faculty members with around 25 students. The figure is now raised to 13 faculty members with approximately 550 students. In each academic year, almost 120 students are offered admission to the department. Applicants are required to go through a very rigorous and stiff competition to secure a seat at the department.
The department is committed to foster legal scholarship. As opposed to the traditional notion of lawyering, it puts emphasis on creating well trained, motivated and morally sound new breed of pro-bono lawyers with the ability to ensure access to justice for the poor and serve the greater interest of the nation. The curriculum is designed in a way that fosters an environment of interdisciplinary scholarship and enhances opportunities for students to learn and to contribute to both national and global legal issues. With two batches recently being graduated, students of the Law Department have successfully set their career footprints in diverse fields including academia, judiciary, law practice, public services etc.
However, the Department of Law, being a recent addition to Jagannath University, is hard-pressed to deal with some sorry state of affairs. There is acute shortage of classrooms in the department. With the increasing number of students getting admitted every year, this problem is turning severe.
On top of that, there is no seminar room for the students. Absence of seminar room certainly hinders the legal minds from engaging in teaching and learning beyond the classroom. There is no mock trial room or law clinic either. Despite having procedural subjects like “Moot Court Lawyering,” “Legal Drafting and Professional Ethics” and “Trial and Advocacy Training,” no effective means are available to reap their full potential. As a result, these subjects proved not to be very effective for the students.
Apart from taking regular classes at the department, teachers are seen to be engaged in private university teaching and consultancy. Although this practice is not substantially affecting their departmental functions, but it is in fact true that it somehow reduces their contributions for the department. Since politics is a very common phenomenon in public universities, ours is no exception. However, teachers’ involvement in politics had no detrimental effect on the academic activities so far.
In the midst of all these bugbears, the department has been, by and large, successful in keeping the students away from the unpleasant experience of session jam which is typical to almost all public universities in Bangladesh. As opposed to the year-system followed in different public university law departments, students of Jagannath University Law School seem to have benefited from the semester-system it follows.
Insufficient infrastructural facilities have made the scope for extra-curricular activities relatively limited. The only club Law Department has is Jagannath University Moot Court Society, although it is yet to carry out its functions in a full-fledged fashion. However, students regularly publish wall magazines and there are some study circles as well.
On a regular basis, students do actively take part in various moot court and debate competitions like National Henry Dunant Moot Court Competition, ElCOP Refugee Law Moot Court Competition, and Inter-University Debate Competition etc. Every year, a good number of students from the department participate in the Human Rights Summer School organised by ELCOP which is the only residential programme in Bangladesh designed especially for law students.
Established with the pledge to revolutionise the legal education in Bangladesh and to encapsulate a high standard of academic excellence, the Department of Law, Jagannath University, is yet to reflect all its promises in reality. However, having said so, it would be no exaggeration to assert that in a short period of time and despite being faced with loads of conundrums, it has attained a considerable progress in terms of the quality of legal education it imparts. That progress is evident from the accomplishments that the fresh graduates of the Law Department have achieved so far in their respective fields.
Md Abdur Razzak is a student researcher, mooter and human rights activist.
Source:
http://www.dhakatribune.com/juris/2015/feb/26/transforming-legal-education-bangladesh#sthash.d07A2AjL.GXgQwHY9.dpuf
