Faisal Fasih taught Evidence Law brilliantly. He compels us to think, read and be interactive in class. Ankita Chakravarty for Sociology is also good and Surja Baladhikari of CrPC puts in decent effort though can get monotonous at times.
These are the few teachers whom I have always liked from my time. It is a personal choice, others may have their own list, though it is unlikely that anybody would consider these people bad teachers.
1. Lovely Dasgupta for Contracts. She does not have an exactly student-friendly attitude and often comes across as sarcastic, but really knows her subject and can explain it too. The huge caseload provided by her is a bit of a bummer, but overall it works for learning the basic principles. 2. Shameek Sen for Constitutional Law. Good classes for discussion, brainstorming if you are into it. The teacher is also patient. 3. Saurabh Bhattacharjee for Labour Law, Law and Impoverishment. The best of the lot. Amazing teacher! Painstakingly thorough, provides great feedback, very good control over the subject, teaches the students to ask the right questions. I can go back to his classes again and again. 4. Anirban Mazumdar for Copyright Law. A little intimidating, but covers the fundamentals really well. Could focus on international and comparative issues more, maybe. Overall a good classroom experience. 5. Ruchira Goswami for Gender and Law. She's a teacher of sociology, but I have only studied this elective with her. Very good delivery and explanations inside classrooms, kind to the students. Encourages you to ask questions. I have heard from seniors that she used to be even better, but was suffering from some health issues when she had been teaching us. 6. Sandeep Bhat for Outer Space Law. Excellent knowledge of the subject, possibly one of the authorities in that discipline in the country, lucid explanations. Heavy disciplinarian, keeps pushing the students. He also offers Trade Law, but I did not take that elective. Several foreign scholars in space law speak of him highly too. 7. Shouvik Guha for Corporate Law. Patient, kind, good knowledge of the subject, will keep explaining from different angles until you get the point, focuses on concepts and procedure both, which was useful during internships for me. Offers good one-to-one advice outside classroom too on several issues including career choice, mental health issues, problems faced during internships, moots. If you can convince him that you really need help with something, he usually obliges. He also offers an elective on Project Finance, covers some of the basic concepts well in a limited manner. I have heard about his Harry Potter and law course and AI and law course since having left NUJS, but can't really speak for those myself. 8. Sanjay Kumar for Tax. He occasionally faces a language issue, but has solid knowledge of the subject if one can overlook it. I found the subject boring TBH, but the classes were interesting once I started paying attention.
Other than these people, I have heard good things about Agnidipto Tarafder for Privacy Law, Anuradha Roychowdhury for M&A, though I didn't take those papers myself. Some people think Faisal Fasih was also decent for criminal law, but I was not very convinced. It could be because I never liked the area much.
#3 comment is the best. By mistake I downvoted it after reading the first line, then I realised it is sarcasm.I think others similarly downvoted it by mistake.
A large part of the batch got 'alienated' because they hardly attended any class whatsoever, particularly since online classes started, whether the faculty are good or bad. Kind of difficult to figure out how the classes are when you have attended less than one in every five.
Delhi University, Prof. Kamla Sankaran, Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence and Labour Law, she is just fabulous in the way she connects with the students. Her knowledge on the subject is immense. In offline classes, there's hardly any space in the classroom to sit.
1. Rangin Tripathy - damn strict about attendance and doesn’t take shit from students, but his classes were really interesting. Actually makes you think and challenge your assumptions about established legal principles. Being taught in his class is an experience.
2. Nanditta Batra - slightly impatient & lot of students don’t like her because she used to give lengthy projects, but I think she genuinely wants to push students to be the best version of themselves, and actually think and research what they write in the paper. She’s super supportive of her students and probably bit too idealistic.
I’m sure there are other teachers also who are brilliant, but most students are very laid back about studies and try to avoid it as much as possible. So I suppose after a point even the other teachers have stopped trying to make classes interesting.
Is that why the third year students whom I have met so far lack any knowledge in all these three subjects? It's no secret that online classes have been treated by junior batches in particular as just a prop. Pursuit of excellence is indeed a utopian goal insofar as most students are concerned, even good faculty at NUJS would now settle for students just having basic understanding of the subjects.
School of Policy and Governance, Azim Premji University, Bangalore: Dr. Sitharamam Kakarala, Political Theory/Law and Justice. Prof. Ram (as we call him) is easily one of the best teachers interacting with Indian law students today. He is deeply knowledgeable in fields such as Political Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Comparative Law. His lectures reflect great depth and he encourages students to ask questions at every point. Even if you offer an underdeveloped opinion or erroneous information in class, he will find a way to incorporate that into his explanations and gently correct you. He is a very patient listener and gives carefully thought out feedback on written assignments. I have also found him to be very humble and respectful towards his colleagues and students alike. Some of his former students from NLSIU (where he taught in the 1990s) have been interacting with us at APU and they all have great things to say about him.
NUJS, Dr. Anupama Ghoshal, Dr. Bikramjeet De, Dr. Jyotirmoy Adhikari, Dr. Soumya Sahin till 2nd year. Reason- They teach so good that everyone scores E without attending classes.
First year: Agnidipto Tarafdar, Legal Methods Second Year: Shameek Sen, Consti Third year: Atul Alexander, PIL
While there are other brilliant teachers out there particularly for contracts and corp law, I found it difficult to connect with these. I believe that in pursuit of excellence they alienated a large part of the batch.
On the other hand three teachers that I have listed did a lot handholding and had a goal of increasing our knowledge instead of persuing utopian excellence in an extremely small chunk.
GNLU, K Parameswaran, taught me PIL, really patient and takes time to explain the intricacies of concepts and the philosophy behind them. Problem is that the syllabus cannot be completed through this method, but he tries to devote actual efforts at teaching with context. I enjoyed it a lot personally and it somewhat created an interest towards PIL which I started reading, though that died down with my civil law-based internships.
1. Lovely Dasgupta for Contracts. She does not have an exactly student-friendly attitude and often comes across as sarcastic, but really knows her subject and can explain it too. The huge caseload provided by her is a bit of a bummer, but overall it works for learning the basic principles.
2. Shameek Sen for Constitutional Law. Good classes for discussion, brainstorming if you are into it. The teacher is also patient.
3. Saurabh Bhattacharjee for Labour Law, Law and Impoverishment. The best of the lot. Amazing teacher! Painstakingly thorough, provides great feedback, very good control over the subject, teaches the students to ask the right questions. I can go back to his classes again and again.
4. Anirban Mazumdar for Copyright Law. A little intimidating, but covers the fundamentals really well. Could focus on international and comparative issues more, maybe. Overall a good classroom experience.
5. Ruchira Goswami for Gender and Law. She's a teacher of sociology, but I have only studied this elective with her. Very good delivery and explanations inside classrooms, kind to the students. Encourages you to ask questions. I have heard from seniors that she used to be even better, but was suffering from some health issues when she had been teaching us.
6. Sandeep Bhat for Outer Space Law. Excellent knowledge of the subject, possibly one of the authorities in that discipline in the country, lucid explanations. Heavy disciplinarian, keeps pushing the students. He also offers Trade Law, but I did not take that elective. Several foreign scholars in space law speak of him highly too.
7. Shouvik Guha for Corporate Law. Patient, kind, good knowledge of the subject, will keep explaining from different angles until you get the point, focuses on concepts and procedure both, which was useful during internships for me. Offers good one-to-one advice outside classroom too on several issues including career choice, mental health issues, problems faced during internships, moots. If you can convince him that you really need help with something, he usually obliges. He also offers an elective on Project Finance, covers some of the basic concepts well in a limited manner. I have heard about his Harry Potter and law course and AI and law course since having left NUJS, but can't really speak for those myself.
8. Sanjay Kumar for Tax. He occasionally faces a language issue, but has solid knowledge of the subject if one can overlook it. I found the subject boring TBH, but the classes were interesting once I started paying attention.
Other than these people, I have heard good things about Agnidipto Tarafder for Privacy Law, Anuradha Roychowdhury for M&A, though I didn't take those papers myself. Some people think Faisal Fasih was also decent for criminal law, but I was not very convinced. It could be because I never liked the area much.
2. Nanditta Batra - slightly impatient & lot of students don’t like her because she used to give lengthy projects, but I think she genuinely wants to push students to be the best version of themselves, and actually think and research what they write in the paper. She’s super supportive of her students and probably bit too idealistic.
I’m sure there are other teachers also who are brilliant, but most students are very laid back about studies and try to avoid it as much as possible. So I suppose after a point even the other teachers have stopped trying to make classes interesting.
Prof. Ram (as we call him) is easily one of the best teachers interacting with Indian law students today. He is deeply knowledgeable in fields such as Political Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Comparative Law. His lectures reflect great depth and he encourages students to ask questions at every point. Even if you offer an underdeveloped opinion or erroneous information in class, he will find a way to incorporate that into his explanations and gently correct you. He is a very patient listener and gives carefully thought out feedback on written assignments. I have also found him to be very humble and respectful towards his colleagues and students alike. Some of his former students from NLSIU (where he taught in the 1990s) have been interacting with us at APU and they all have great things to say about him.
First year: Agnidipto Tarafdar, Legal Methods
Second Year: Shameek Sen, Consti
Third year: Atul Alexander, PIL
While there are other brilliant teachers out there particularly for contracts and corp law, I found it difficult to connect with these. I believe that in pursuit of excellence they alienated a large part of the batch.
On the other hand three teachers that I have listed did a lot handholding and had a goal of increasing our knowledge instead of persuing utopian excellence in an extremely small chunk.
Teaching only, no publications and research.