Sonipat (Haryana) [India] December 4 (ANI/OP Jindal University): Tushar Mehta, Solicitor General of India & Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India, speaking at the valedictory session of the three-day Global Law Schools’ Summit on the theme “The Present and Future of Global Legal Education” said, “Globalisation in the last few decades has been accelerating exponentially largely due to the advancement in transportation, communication, technologies, and various other reasons.
With the great benefit of globalization also comes some global risks and very vital global challenges. Recently, all of us have witnessed the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the largest price was paid in terms of lives. Therefore, it has also resulted in greater demands of global justice and a need for a better understanding of the implications of globalization. In order to virtually recreate the world, not only do we need to strengthen our legal systems and innovate solutions that are balanced with empathy, but we will also need to come together to reimagine a global justice system. Globalization in law and legal education has always been — and even in these times will be — very crucial to pave a path for a stronger justice system.
With JGU being one of India’s institutions of eminence and JGLS being India’s number one law school as per the QS World University Rankings, the institution has indeed lived up to its commitment to increase in building India’s global footprint.
With this summit seeing leaders from across 100 law schools from across the world and representing divergent views and intellectual ideas, JGU has truly elevated the idea of being global, especially at a time when globalization is crucial to the progress of the world around us. We need to redefine the way global education can contribute to bringing about a change in this world and we must use this gathering today as an opportunity to find our collective consciousness to re-assess the present and reimagine the future of global education at large.”
The Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) has organized a truly international, one-of-its-kind Global Law Schools’ Summit, bringing together 150+ thought leaders from 6 continents and 35+ countries over 21 Thematic Sessions, 8 Special Dialogues, 2 Colloquiums, and 3 Keynote Addresses to discuss the present and future of Global Legal Education. The summit concluded with a Valedictory Address by Tushar Mehta, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India and the Solicitor General of India. Dr Sasmit Patra, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha and Member, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice, India delivered the Special Address.
In his Special Address, Dr Sasmit Patra said, “Sometimes we take democracy for granted. Whether it’s the Middle East, the Far East, or South America, you find new definitions and dimensions of democracy, which basically hinges on who has more power, resources, demography, population, etc. Before we can think of democracy and strengthening democracy, the idea of strengthening the citizen is paramount. Legal education has a huge role to play in terms of building those core values for budding young lawyers. It is important to remember the basic rules and fundamentals of studying law and that using law as a platform will help to provide information, strengthen citizen-centric services, and help citizens to really rediscover their strengths to be able to ask the system questions and to get their rightful answers.”
\Dr. Patra raised pertinent questions on whether legal education is preparing students to ensure access to justice, public accountability, respect for democratic institutions and ensuring the independence of the jury. “Legal education is surely strengthening the legal process. But is legal education truly helping us to strengthen democracy? Many times, we find that democracy survives sustains, grows, and thrives when especially the citizens of a nation have access to the judicial system.”
In his welcome address, the Founding Vice-Chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University and Dean of Jindal Global Law School Prof. (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar said, “The onset of the pandemic from March 2020 was perhaps was one of the most unprecedented crises of our times. With an aim to envision the transformation of law schools, we held our first law summit last year. It was the starting point of an ongoing transformation at JGLS and we wanted to further strengthen our commitment to the change we want to see in the delivery of justice. Therefore, this 2nd edition of the summit is focused on the importance of globalization in the way we evolve our legal education. We wanted to evaluate the kinds of resilience adopted by the law schools in the face of the pandemic and create dialogues. What began as a small idea has evolved into a global platform and we have witnessed an overwhelming participation of more than 150 thought leaders across six continents and over 35 countries over the last three days. This has been our humble effort to have members of academia and industry come together on a single platform to shape and transform the future of law and legal education. We had 50 hours of live streaming with more than 3500 views across multiple time zones.”
The concluding remarks were made by Professor (Dr.) S.G. Sreejith, Executive Dean, Jindal Global Law School. “The idea of this conference was prompted by the many uncertainties faced by society over the last two decades. During this summit, we wanted to hear stories of resistance, response, and resilience in the areas of legal education and the legal profession. The conference brought to us incredible stories in the language of theory, practice, experiences, and experiments. From those stories, we understood the inescapability of phenomena which further informed us that we have the courage and competency to face those uncertainties. We have heard tales of redemption and reimagination in various branches of law, the struggle for the intellectual and cultural identities of law but still, all our deliberations and collective self-expression ended on the note of hope.”
The Summit saw law experts, academics, vice-chancellors, deans, and heads of law institutions from 35+ countries, to make this Conference a truly global experience. The conference witnessed the participation of speakers from Australia, Belgium, Bhutan, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, France, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lithuania, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, The Czech Republic, The United Kingdom, The United States of America, Turkey, Uruguay. The vote of thanks was given by Professor Dabiru Sridhar Patnaik, Registrar, JGU.
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