"I am already from a top national law school, so not chasing tags" and "I am not sure of my chances of getting admitted [in the UK]". Not such a top national law school now, is it? There's a reason that Law School is the only National Law School. The others are National Law Universities (even TNNLS changed its name to TNNLU).

Hi,

It seems I have offended you in some way with my earlier comment. While what you chose to take away from my comment is something I don't near the burden off, I must clarify that with my comment what I meant was I have (till now) not faced any difficulty in accessing spaces which may be restricted basis wholly unwarranted tags of national law schools/universities. So by "not chasing tags" I meant, I don't want to do a PhD under a star supervisor simply for instrumental reasons for securing jobs which by my abundance of privilege has not been difficult to come by.

On not being confident on getting into unis abroad, it does not matter what I thin about that, but if you think by simply being from NLS has given earlier students a rite of passage to good unis aborad - I would strongly urge you to reconsider this and not peddle this woodoo information about! Cheers!

its not that difficult, you need to first prepare a proposal which will contain a brief literature review, gap in the literature and the research question of your proposed thesis, then find out unis which have fully funded scholarships (there will be around 30 unis) then approach professors in those unis who might be interested in your research topic and send them your proposal with a nice cover letter, you would get response in about 20% of cases, pursue them and apply in those 3-5 unis. With a bit of luck one of them offer your a scholarship.

Does not seem to substantially answer what I asked. My question was not "if" I will join the unis but how is this "specific" prgram. While I appreciate your answer, I will be pushing back because it puts us on a slope of comparing disparate programs without any real methodology to do so.

In Re JNU: it has a compulsory MPHIL which puts you back by 2 years. Don't have that sort of time!

Don't go. JGLS is far superior than NLS when it comes to doctoral programmes. Its PhD programme is recognised by various universities abroad and offers potential term/year abroad opportunities, along with access to highly qualified individuals from non-legal and interdisciplinary backgrounds. It is rigorous, produces excellent quality of doctoral thesis and offers library/e-resources/research support that no NLU can offer. Moreover, leading legal scholars like Professor M.P. Singh, Professor B.S. Chimni, Professor Alex Fischer, Professor G.K. Kwatra, Professor Jasmeet Gulati, Professor B.B. Pande, Professor Gudmundur Eriksson, Professor Vesselin Popovski, Professor Sarbani Sen can be your supervisors - many of whom are Oxbridge, Harvard, Yale, Ivy League and Russel group alumni themselves. It is also a pathway for many doctoral students for getting into JGLS as a faculty member.

Lol this is hilarious. I’ve been to jgls phd defenses. They don’t even ask the candidate any questions. Like that’s not a world class programme.

OP: law schools new programmes or revived programmes - it’s a little early to tell how good. They haven’t graduated anyone who joined after the changes. Your best bet would be to email current students and ask them how things are going. The cohort seems to be an encouraging sign though. At least those who got in the last few years. And the new faculty do spend time and effort trying to improve the programme.

Hi good sir! firstly, thank you for taking time to comment on this. I appreciate it. I will respond to your comment as charitably as I can so please don't take this in a wrong way - Yes. JGLS has world beater professors - but I am struggling with is to understand that would they really be invested in a supervisory potential? invested not formally, but would they push kindly, and work with you in a substantial way. In a sense, I am trying to understand if they would be mentors as opposed to just formal supervisors.

On the point of being a JGLS faculty - I am not too worried about jobs, given my privilege of class location, National Law school tag, extensive law firm experience and good referees I am fairly confident about getting a job, if need be. In fact, I would want to each at a national law school or a govt. college but that's my (possibly extremely flawed and subjective) politics.

So in this context, do you think the profs who you have kindly mentioned would be open to supervising? Once again thank you so much. :)

As an academic, I can tell you this: with a few exceptions, star professors do not like to teach as much but they love to supervise. Research is what makes them what they are and you, as a PhD, assist in that - it basically part of their problem to you so that you learn to do what they do on your own. I would think the opportunity to work with them for a PhD is far more lucrative than what NLS can offer.

I was asked straight up (with other senior faculty members on the call) whether I am comfortable authoring pieces that will be published under senior professors' names, sometimes with me as co-author. It was made clear to me that I would be the one writing these papers from beginning to end as the junior scholar. That isn't an institution in which I would send anyone to do a PhD.

Its a bit hard to give aa straight yes or now answer to this question. but let me try and identify some of the variables that should lead us to some answers.

1. What are you planning to do your Ph.D on and does NLS have potentially good supervisors for those topics and are they in a position to supervise you. This is perhaps the most important of all considerations because your journey will depend a lot on how good and sensible your supervisor is. While at the end of the day a doctoral programme is more or less entirely in your hands, a good supervisor can make a world of difference (on both positive and negative ways). So no straight answer on this count- it depends entirely on your requirements.

2. institutional processes, standards and facilities - on this count NLS definitely ranks very high. The research infrastructure is good, the administration is supportive and largely does things on time. The chances that your ph.d will be delayed on account of administrative inefficiencies is minimal (not saying that things are perfect, but probably the best in India).

3. The chances for learning more and broadening your horizons. I think with the changes that sudheer has brought about (both in terms of content and the quality of available faculty), the course work is pretty good and it will give you a lot of opportunities to learn, think and reflect. There are also some opportunities to go abroad and spend some time for research visits. That being said, Jindal may give you more opportunities of the later variety,

Dont pay too much of attention to things like "brand value". in the long run and in the grand scheme of things Ph.D is also just a degree.

Contrary to what a few people have said here, chances of your PhD getting delayed at NLSIU are quite high. Many current scholars have faced exactly the same problem, when the VC insisted in a totally arbitrary manner to sit on their thesis defence dates despite those having been approved by external evaluators. He was not an expert on many of those topics, yet seemed to be having some totally subjective notions of quality that he felt the guides and evaluators were not capable of judging, and that only he was. Nor did he officially reject those thesis or sent them back for improvement, but simply kept quiet on allowing the degrees to be awarded. People applied and literally begged for months. In some cases, after the externals sent the thesis back with suggestions, the scholars were asked to incorporate those and then the thesis were sent to completely new set of externals once again! It was a horror story. Even the guides were helpless because the VC refused to listen to them. Basically it was a horror story without any governing rules or principles.

I agree that sudheer should not have sat on it once some process is in place and that process had resulted in some decisions.

The greater issue was really the sort of people that the previous VC and establishment had put in charge of these processes. there were some really substandard people who simply did not match the standards that a place like NLSIU ought to look at. I guess the idea was to send out some message that it can't be business as usual.

I would say no and only because NLSIU does not have enough interdisciplinary departments to actually make a PhD meaningful. To do you PhD well, you should be on a campus where there are a broad spectrum of departments. NLSIU while being a great Uni does not have a highly developed Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Sciences. PhD's are best done at universities that aren't specialised. So like even Harvard Law is part of Harvard University. So it's great to do it at one of those university law schools. NLUs not so much. It also explains the poor academic output that comes from these colleges. There's a lot of "study" of the law or a "review" of the law, there's very little "movement" of the law. PhD is not like a course you complete and an exam you pass. For it to be meaningful you should advance the study of your field and intersectionality is vital to make that happen.

there are some good and valid points that you have made. but I won't agree with the idea that only inter-disciplinary study of law is good or valid. it is possible to pursue good legal scholarship within the positive law/normative/analytical way of thinking about the law and these are no less valuable additions to scholarship. one can very well advance the study of the field without necessarily being intersectional.

The fact that you used intersectional and interdisciplinary interchangeably speaks of the prior knowledge you have on this topic to form an opinion. Yet you gave one. Just to educate you: intersectionality arose as a hardcore doctrinal analysis of the law, to prove that even doctrine cannot sustain what it aims to do.

You can read Crenshaw's OG paper here: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf

the fact that you do not know how to respond to someone without demeaning someone else shows what sort of a thinker you are. Could you point out what is wrong in saying that "one can very well advance the study of the field without necessarily being intersectional"? what do you make out of the statement " it is possible to pursue good legal scholarship within the positive law/normative/analytical way of thinking about the law and these are no less valuable additions to scholarship". How do these two sentences conflate intersectional and inter-disciplinary? What do you understand is the purpose of a full stop?

Agree 100%. This is the reason why UGC has already made it clear that by 2030 there will be no single discipline universities in the country. To qualify as a degree-granting university, every university must have at least five disciplines. This means stand-alone institutions (like state NLUs) must add at least four non-law disciplines into their mix. All top law schools in the world are part of a larger university system for a reason.

UGC had also said that they would make PhD as the minimum educational qualification necessary to join any university as Assistant Professor from 2021 onward. So far, that is yet to happen. UGC also required universities to keep selfie points with cardboard cutouts of the PM. Best not rely upon UGC's wisdom in a discussion about what is best for higher education in the country.

So so grateful and thankful for this response! I absolutely agree with you. On the first count yes - NLS has the exact professor whom I would want as my supervisor, hands down. I have worked with this particular professor before and their pedagogy and outlook has definitely impacted me. Which is why I was considering NLS to begin with.

On points 2 and 3, yeah. It does seem so. I will try and talk to some people who are presently there. It seems to have become competitive since SK has come. Would you by chance know anything about this? Once again, thank you so much.

well, it has always been competitive at NLS. What are the rules that govern the game - is it personal favours or some rule based decision making that advances quality. I think with Sudheer there has been a lot of emphasis on the latter (but lets always bear in mind that there is no way of completing eliminating the former. there would at least be some issue of views on what is good scholarship or what should be the right approach to academic study of law).

if you already know of professor that you are comfortable to work with, I think you should give that element the highest consideration (I would say 90%) and try and join the place (provided of course that you can ensure that you get that professor). Much of the doctoral journey is supervisor dependent.

Yes, I would love to work with this professor.. While the professor may not be a "star" prof, but his lectures in my younger years left a deep impact on me. Which is why I was considering NLS to begin with. Would you have any idea about one of the earlier comments that was made here? On the asked to be junior authors coercively?

I have come across individuals who did that. whether there was coercion or not is hard to say, but as a thumb rule, I am quite suspicious of faculty who publish with their students as co-authors as a matter of pattern. The suspicions are heightened when one sees a faculty publish on diverse topics with their students. I can imagine that during the Rao years these sort of individuals got away with complete impunity (and there were quite a lot of seedy such characters floating around then.

I do not think that this is an institutional level problem at NLSIU.