History
NUJS was established in 1999 by the Bar Council of India, in conjunction with the government of West Bengal. The founder-vice chancellor was professor N.R. Madhava Menon, a former professor of law of Delhi University and founder-director, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, who is credited with revolutionizing the field of legal education in India, by starting the concept of "law schools", as opposed to the traditional law colleges prevalent before.
Other eminent personalities without whose help and active intervention the university could not have been founded, include Sh. Jyoti Basu, a former chief minister of West Bengal who was a Middle Temple barrister; Sh. Somnath Chatterjee, a former speaker of the Lok Sabha, also a Middle Temple barrister and a leading member of the Calcutta Bar Library; and Justice Chittotosh Mookerjee, a former chief justice of the Calcutta High Court and the Bombay High Court and the (acting) governor of Maharashtra. Justice Mookerjee was the university's honourary treasurer and has been associated with the work of the university since its inception in 1999. The NUJS is an autonomous university.
In the first two years of its existence, NUJS did not have a permanent campus. Classes, which started in 2000, were held at Aranya Bhavan, where the Environment Ministry of the government of West Bengal is located, and the first batches of students started living in government flats. On 28 October 2002, the university's present-day permanent campus was inaugurated by the then chief justice of India, B. N. Kirpal. In 2006, NUJS was allotted a 50-acre (200,000 m2) plot in Rajarhat, an upscale township, which is being developed by the West Bengal government.
According to professor Mahendra P Singh, the university's incumbent vice chancellor, it is NUJS's "endeavour to teach students the value of social justice so that they can help the weaker sections of society." The majority of graduates choose to work at firms that practice corporate law, rather than as litigators, academia or in NGOs. In an article written for The Hindu, Dr Ajay Gudavarthy, a former teacher at NUJS and NLSIU, criticised both institutions as being "tailored for the corporates" and argued that they could end up as "professional institutions without social relevance."
Read more about this topic: West Bengal National University Of Juridical Sciences
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