We want LI to be one of the friendliest places on the internet, where lawyers and law students help each other with their career related queries and occasionally discuss other stuff that might affect their lives too. In other words:
1. Be kind, respectful and helpful to each other.
2. Be bona fide, truthful, genuine and curious.
3. Assume the best intention of others.
Therefore, in using the site, you must agree to do your best to uphold these community guidelines.
Note that what you find here is written and moderated by anonymous people on the internet.
Therefore everything you read here is very likely unverified, rumour, speculation and/or downright false.
In continuing to read anything here, you must therefore agree not to take anything you read here as factual and that you will exercise due caution, diligence and common sense before acting on any information you may come across here.
You also agree to report any inaccurate or malicious comments with the buttons. Moderators take action within 24 hours, as required and appropriate under law.
Our full terms and conditions apply too.
Do you solemnly agree to all of the above?
NLUs are 'humanities-heavy' - meaning their flagship programmes are BA-LLB, and almost all faculty and students have a background/preference for humanities (without any need for science). Almost all students in all NLUs have exposure to science only up to Class 10. Imagine the hue and cry if NLUs were to make Class 12 science mandatory for admission. A glimpse of that is also visible in how students actually look down upon BSc-LLB as against BA-LLB in the NLU ecosystem. The current NLU students do feel 'threatened' by science, hence this is how that fear gets manifested. They see NLUs as the last resort for those who dislike or fear science. Every other avenue is dominated by science - IITs, NITs, AIIMS, and even IIMs.
If one has to constantly justify the 'value' of subjects like philosophy, history, and literature, then that in itself is a red flag about their relevance in a modern, tech-driven world. Useful subjects are useful - they do not need justification. Everyone knows.
This then comes back to the question. Are NLUs even prepared to make this big paradigm shift? This will disrupt their entire operating model.
1. You do know that concepts like RCT etc have been used in economics? That Abhijit Banerjee, the nobel-winning economist, used these concepts? So where is all this "humanities heavy" stuff coming from exactly?
2. You do know that humanities departments (at good universities at least) have research methods training courses on statistical methods? So again, where is this coming from? Sure, some departments do this stuff in a more cursory way than others and sure, there's an argument for maybe teaching it more rigorously, and as far as I am concerned, sure there's an argument for getting statistics/econometrics teaching in at the undergrad level, but still, that doesn't create an environment for the acceptability of this language as a correct description.
3. Finally: For all this guy says, "personal experience" is an important part of the law. Indeed as Holmes says, law is built upon experience. So you cannot discount this stuff. And humanities captures experiences of people - the human condition. Be that philosophy, history, literature... whichever subject. So even to the extent that they aren't Maths focussed, they are important. And the best research often combines the best elements of the two. Look at Hamish Stewart's use of behavioural economics to show the wrong assumptions that Simmonds and Kramer were making in the debate about Fuller's philosophy! Is that not writing about the human condition? Does that not use empirical methods? So again, where's all this bias coming from? Please explain.