An afternoon with Nozick

While many bloggers have posted on the CLAT LLB paper, unfortunately there has been almost nothing on CLAT LLM paper. In this post I seek to analyze the paper and try to find out how India’s next generation of law teachers (I know CLAT is for NLUs only and that law teachers can come from myriads of other law colleges, but ‘next generation’ has a nice ring to it:) were chosen.

First let us start by looking at the syllabus, as per the CLAT 2010 Brochure page 3 column 2 last para the subject areas were Law of Contracts, Law of Torts, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory. The pattern of paper as per Brochure was Objective type 50 questions of one mark each, short answers 100-150 words 10 questions 5 marks each and finally 2 essay type questions of 50 marks each approximately 500-600 words.

On the appointed day I trudge to the examination centre which falls at an old school in a posh locality. And behold my wonder, 5 years ago when I went for the entrance test there were hardly 300 odd candidates at my centre which was the law school. Here a rough guess put the number to around 2000 and there were 3 more centers around the city. My heart swelled with pride at the large number of LLB aspirants (who says law is for engineering rejects?). Armed with my knowledge :(sat for 5 medical entrance about 5 years ago, didn’t crack a single) to avoid the rush to the halls, I lounged at the gate and when the crowd thinned I made my entrance. When I found my seat I was disappointed a bit only around 40 odd people in the PG aspirant room (but some of them were great lookers). From the college gossip I knew I was only one for the CLAT LLM test but still I looked around to see a known face, none. So I settled down.

Preparing for my final semesters I was confident that I would be able to beat any questions that NLU-B might have come up with, also the night before the test I had gone over Bangia on Contract, Bangia on Torts and Baxi on Constitution (little did I know what was in store for me). Finally the papers were given and after scanning through the MCQs I wondered if I got the right paper (what the @#$%) 30% of the MCQs were from Jurisprudence/legal theory, around 20% from Contracts around 25% from criminal law and the rest from torts ohh… sorry one MCQ from constitutional law. For the medium essay type again most emphasis was given on legal theory, one question from Constitutional Law (a ridiculously easy one: who form the electoral college for presidential election, these questions made me to question again as to whether I am sitting for the correct exam) few good questions on contracts. Finally the long essay type questions (3 choices for each question) I chose one on minor’s ability to contract and the other question seems to elude my mind.

What was startling was the examiners persistence with Fuller’s inner morality. First a MCQ on what did not constitute Fuller’s inner morality, then a 5 marks short note on the same topic and finally a long essay on the same topic. It seemed as though the NLU-B professor could not move beyond Fuller. Invariably when Fuller comes in he brings with him Rawls, Dworkin, Duguit and the surprise entrant Nozick. They collectively made me sweat (and it was also very hot). Around me people were marking the MCQs at furious pace and I cursed myself for not paying attention in Jurisprudence class (Duguit on sovereignty?) oho.. Rawls I heard about, Dworkin I know from the cover of his book “Taking Rights Seriously” reprinted by Universal for a low price edition in India, the cover looked like the face of a girl on fire and I had avoided it, now I just thought why didn’t I turn few pages like few others did. After the collective beating and knowing that my chances at CLAT LLM is over, I went to the next set of questions the contract MCQs were straight out of illustrations from the Contract Act, nothing fancy, torts were similar. So ended the MCQ for me battered by legal theory, soothed a little by contract and tort, indifference from criminal and disappointed by constitution.

Now the short notes Duguit again drew blank from me, Fuller got the MCQ options written in good measure with lot of cement in between (experience in paraphrasing for 50 projects came handy). Absolute liability was a smash hit so were the questions on liability and a puny question on constitution. I wrapped the last two big essay questions in double quick time and was done with one hour to spare but could not get out of the exam hall so I wasted my time by going over the same questions knowing fully well that I could hardly discover my power of teleportation at such advanced age (who knows).   

Overall the paper was of varying quality while the jurisprudence side was quite heavy and lifted few questions straight out of UPSC the questions on tort and contract were ludicrously easy and criminal law questions were a microcosm of  the entire paper (meaning some were superbly nutty while others were a walk in the park). All the questions tried to examine the cramming capacity of a candidate rather than critical analytical powers of the candidates. LLM as I had said in the beginning is a higher educational degree which generally is chosen by those who want to opt for academics. So the very foundation of tomorrow’s law teachers is based on how much he/she can cram. A question on absolute liability could well have been disguised in a form of illustration and could have become a short answer rather it became a MCQ. Thus yet again the gates of post graduate education at India’s finest institution would be on the basis of those who can cram best not those who imbibe them. No wonder Prof. Madhav Menon, the founder of National Law School movement in India, recently said that LLM studies in India is far behind the global standards, at this rate I doubt if we can ever catch up.