CHAIRMAN OF THE BAR COUNCIL OF INDIA (‘BCI’), Manan Kumar Mishra’s directions imposing a ban on the enrollment of students of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research University of Law (‘NALSAR’) and the events that followed, have brought the BCI under renewed scrutiny. Much has been written about the functioning of the BCI, as well as the discriminatory practices, work environments, fee structures and inadequate infrastructure and amenities of the National Law Universities (‘NLUs’). Far less attention, however, has been paid to the architecture of power within the NLUs. This piece argues that the judicialisation of NLU governance, combined with a striking mismatch between the institutional scale of these universities and the extraordinary weight vested in the office of the Vice Chancellor, has produced a structural imbalance that deserves much closer examination. It is also an attempt to critically reflect upon the concentration of administrative and institutional power, the role of judicial figures in governance and the relative weakness of other mechanisms of accountability.
The Judiciary’s Relationship with the NLUs
The Judiciary has played a pivotal role in conceiving, establishing and nurturing the NLUs. But that history should not place judicial authority beyond scrutiny. The judiciary is itself a powerful institutional centre while the NLUs are public universities whose governance must be accountable, transparent and democratically defensible. This article is, ultimately, a constructive effort intended to subject the governance of the NLUs to the same critical examination that we rightly demand of other institutions of public power. It is intended to contribute to the institutional health and democratic functioning of these universities.
A highly judicialised university administration exercises a disproportionate degree of power over a relatively small and largely captive constituency comprising students, research scholars, teachers and administrative staff. The NLUs operate in significant measure under the tutelage of the higher judiciary with the Chief Justices of the respective High Courts serving as the heads of most of these institutions. For students, this creates a particularly unusual configuration of authority. Judicial officers are not merely their administrative superiors but also represent a professional establishment within which many of these students hope to work in the future. For the judiciary, administering a university is an additional responsibility, one that is fundamentally non-judicial in character. This may be an onerous responsibility but is equally an additional source of authority.
