Sunday, February 22, 2009
Talk on Human Rights in the Pre-British Period
At the talk on Human Rights in Pre-British Period organised by the Centre for Human Rights on 22nd February, Justice B N Krishna enthralled an audience with a speech which was equal parts Sanskrit, equal parts humour and equal parts historical insight. Refuting the widely held notions of Human Rights as being gift of the British to India, Justice Krishna showed by way of examples how the ideas of human rights albeit within a uniquely duty based system existed in pre British India. He fielded questions from the students and faculty with much élan and had the audience listening in rapt attention.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
NUJS Law Review Symposium
The first ever NUJS Law Review Symposium was held on the 14th February, 2009. It was chaired by Mr. K.P. Pathak, Additional Solicitor General of India and was addressed by several eminent persons which included Mr. A.K. Samanta, former D.G.P., West Bengal, Mr. Oishik Sircar, Human Rights Scholar and Mr. Shameek Sen, Lecturer, NUJS. The symposium also hosted presentation of papers by several students of the University and saw keen participation by the faculty members. There also plans to expand the Symposium and rope in greater participation starting next year.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
NUJS eJurix Legal Essay Competition UPDATE
Dear Participants,
We extend the deadline for submisions for the Competition by one week. Your soft copies must therefore, reach us by the 24th of Feb. and hard copies by the 27th.
For all those still having technical problems with the E Jurix passwords, please use them on Internet Explorer from version 5.5 onwards. The EJurix team has assured us that the passwords are working fine at their end, but will look into the matter further in case you still have problems.
For all those who still havent received an EJurix ID and password, this is to assure you that we have forwarded your names and email ID's to the EJurix team and they will come back to us with IDs and passwords, which we shall forward to you as soon as we get them. In the meantime, please feel free to begin independent research on the topics.
Please do not hesitate to get back to us with any queries if required at nujs.writersblock@gmail.com
The complete list of Rules and Regulations may be downloaded here.
Kindly note that the last date for submitting the soft copy is 24th February 2009 and for the hard copy is 27th February 2009.
All participants shall receive a free eJurix account to be used for research purposes.
For your free ejurix a/c send in an e-mail to nujs.writersblock@gmail.com with your name and contact details.
We extend the deadline for submisions for the Competition by one week. Your soft copies must therefore, reach us by the 24th of Feb. and hard copies by the 27th.
For all those still having technical problems with the E Jurix passwords, please use them on Internet Explorer from version 5.5 onwards. The EJurix team has assured us that the passwords are working fine at their end, but will look into the matter further in case you still have problems.
For all those who still havent received an EJurix ID and password, this is to assure you that we have forwarded your names and email ID's to the EJurix team and they will come back to us with IDs and passwords, which we shall forward to you as soon as we get them. In the meantime, please feel free to begin independent research on the topics.
Please do not hesitate to get back to us with any queries if required at nujs.writersblock@gmail.com
The complete list of Rules and Regulations may be downloaded here.
Kindly note that the last date for submitting the soft copy is 24th February 2009 and for the hard copy is 27th February 2009.
All participants shall receive a free eJurix account to be used for research purposes.
For your free ejurix a/c send in an e-mail to nujs.writersblock@gmail.com with your name and contact details.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Corporate Law Lectures
NUJS was recently witness to a series of lectures entitled ‘Corporate Law – Principles to Practice’ by Mr. Edward Walker-Arnott. Mr. Walker-Arnott, currently a consultant at Herbert Smith LLP, and formerly a Senior Partner (1992-2000), is widely acknowledged to be an expert in the realm of contemporary commercial law and usage. Additionally, having been a supervisor of company law at Trinity College and a Visiting Professor at University College, London, he is no stranger to academia either.
At NUJS, we were fortunate to have a total of seven sessions, which attempted to encompass almost all of the major strands of corporate law; ranging from corporate governance to share capital, insolvency issues or investor protection stratagems. Mr. Walker-Arnott, in addition to dealing with the provisions of law in India and UK, or theoretical concepts associated therewith, also frequently took anecdotal recourse to his own rich reserve of professional experiences in order to further elucidate a point. It can only be hoped, at the end of this lecture series, that students at NUJS have come alive to the variegated workings of the world of corporate law, where most of us might be striving to carve out a name for ourselves in the days to come.
At NUJS, we were fortunate to have a total of seven sessions, which attempted to encompass almost all of the major strands of corporate law; ranging from corporate governance to share capital, insolvency issues or investor protection stratagems. Mr. Walker-Arnott, in addition to dealing with the provisions of law in India and UK, or theoretical concepts associated therewith, also frequently took anecdotal recourse to his own rich reserve of professional experiences in order to further elucidate a point. It can only be hoped, at the end of this lecture series, that students at NUJS have come alive to the variegated workings of the world of corporate law, where most of us might be striving to carve out a name for ourselves in the days to come.
Shekhar Sumit (Class of 2009)
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
New Attendance Rule
The old system, whereby up to five marks out of a hundred in any subject were awarded on the basis of the number of classes a student attended in a semester, has been scrapped with effect from the current semester. For the present, the five marks in question will be added to the grand total in the end semester written examinations. From the next semester onwards, so we are told, five marks will instead be set aside for class participation. Proformas shall no longer be accepted either. However, the rule that a student must have a minimum of 66% attendance to be eligible to write their test is still in force.
According to the Vice-Chancellor, the logic behind the move was that quality classroom teaching and not marks should the incentive for students to attend class; students will soon realize that if they do not attend class, their understanding of a subject will be hampered and their academic performance will anyway suffer. Other supporters hail the decision because they believe it will address a patently unfair situation which existed under the earlier rules: some students having access to committee proformas which they have been known to use for illegitimate purposes.
While this move was hailed by some as the best New Year’s gift they ever received, others among the faculty and students were heard sounding a more skeptical note. They predicted that with no incentive to come for class, attendance will drop drastically and academic development will suffer. Is this cynicism justified? Only time (and attendance registers) will tell.
According to the Vice-Chancellor, the logic behind the move was that quality classroom teaching and not marks should the incentive for students to attend class; students will soon realize that if they do not attend class, their understanding of a subject will be hampered and their academic performance will anyway suffer. Other supporters hail the decision because they believe it will address a patently unfair situation which existed under the earlier rules: some students having access to committee proformas which they have been known to use for illegitimate purposes.
While this move was hailed by some as the best New Year’s gift they ever received, others among the faculty and students were heard sounding a more skeptical note. They predicted that with no incentive to come for class, attendance will drop drastically and academic development will suffer. Is this cynicism justified? Only time (and attendance registers) will tell.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
The Freedom of Speech in Source Codes and Conferences
Richard Stallman was in Kolkata recently. He made the inaugural speech at a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) conference held in Science City. Some of you may know Richard Stallman; he’s the man behind the GNU GPL (GNU’s Not Unix, General Public License) free software license. Free software is a big deal for some people, programmers, I.T. professionals, companies that deal in I.T. solutions and distributions.
He began a movement that declared that the source code behind the program be made free, too, for the User to manipulate and play around with the program and distribute it. For him, as a programmer at MIT, it was imprisonment and simply against our fundamental Right to Freedom to contract with and be bound by the terms of Click-wrap contracts and the like that some software licenses (Read: Microsoft™) abound in.
So at the FOSS conference, Richard Stallman came onto the stage and told us that there was no such thing as ‘Free and Open Source’. It was the Free Software Movement (FSM) that he spoke for, and he shed light on a past episode with Linus Torvalds that led to the branching of the FSM into the FSM & Open Source Software Movement that has given us Linux. His speech went on to describe the advantages of adopting Free Software and discussed its many merits, at the same time dismissing Microsoft™ as a dictatorship and the U.S. Government as a terrorist organisation. He said that there were four basic freedoms associated with the Free Software Movement: 0) to run the program as you wish; 1) to make changes to the code and run the program; 2) to be able to pass on the software to your friends; 3) to be able to pass on the altered or customized code to your friends. “Free as in mukhto,” he said.
The second day witnessed a lot of new inputs on the subject and its applicability in businesses, e-governance and the legal aspects of it. The IPR Chair of our University, Prof. Shamnad Basheer was there to make a presentation on the legal aspects of FOSS (“(de)coding the Law”) in the course of which he made some use of the phrases ‘Intellectual Property’ and ‘Intellectual Property Rights’. Naturally, you would say. But St. Ignucius here took serious umbrage to it, booing during the presentation, accusing our Professor of resorting to their terminology and thus persuaded by their beliefs and denied the existence of notions like Intellectual Property at all. And fireworks followed, and we all watched, and clapped, of course.
But the audience was mostly unresponsive on both days, and was only mildly discomforted each time the firebrand speaker (with the big belly and the flaming, open hair like a has-been rockstar) came onto the stage to make his point.
The conference was quite well organized, with a comprehensive kit for every participant, and lunch and tea and snacks served on both days. Also, the range of related subjects that were touched upon along with FOSS was impressive, like FOSS and Sustainable Development, FOSS and Information Technology, FOSS and businesses. Anyone interested enough in the topics would have learnt quite a bit.
He began a movement that declared that the source code behind the program be made free, too, for the User to manipulate and play around with the program and distribute it. For him, as a programmer at MIT, it was imprisonment and simply against our fundamental Right to Freedom to contract with and be bound by the terms of Click-wrap contracts and the like that some software licenses (Read: Microsoft™) abound in.
So at the FOSS conference, Richard Stallman came onto the stage and told us that there was no such thing as ‘Free and Open Source’. It was the Free Software Movement (FSM) that he spoke for, and he shed light on a past episode with Linus Torvalds that led to the branching of the FSM into the FSM & Open Source Software Movement that has given us Linux. His speech went on to describe the advantages of adopting Free Software and discussed its many merits, at the same time dismissing Microsoft™ as a dictatorship and the U.S. Government as a terrorist organisation. He said that there were four basic freedoms associated with the Free Software Movement: 0) to run the program as you wish; 1) to make changes to the code and run the program; 2) to be able to pass on the software to your friends; 3) to be able to pass on the altered or customized code to your friends. “Free as in mukhto,” he said.
The second day witnessed a lot of new inputs on the subject and its applicability in businesses, e-governance and the legal aspects of it. The IPR Chair of our University, Prof. Shamnad Basheer was there to make a presentation on the legal aspects of FOSS (“(de)coding the Law”) in the course of which he made some use of the phrases ‘Intellectual Property’ and ‘Intellectual Property Rights’. Naturally, you would say. But St. Ignucius here took serious umbrage to it, booing during the presentation, accusing our Professor of resorting to their terminology and thus persuaded by their beliefs and denied the existence of notions like Intellectual Property at all. And fireworks followed, and we all watched, and clapped, of course.
But the audience was mostly unresponsive on both days, and was only mildly discomforted each time the firebrand speaker (with the big belly and the flaming, open hair like a has-been rockstar) came onto the stage to make his point.
The conference was quite well organized, with a comprehensive kit for every participant, and lunch and tea and snacks served on both days. Also, the range of related subjects that were touched upon along with FOSS was impressive, like FOSS and Sustainable Development, FOSS and Information Technology, FOSS and businesses. Anyone interested enough in the topics would have learnt quite a bit.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
K. C. Basu Endowment Lecture
The K. C. Basu Endowment Lecture is an annual lecture instituted by Dr. Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics, Cornell University in his father’s name. The lecture is hosted by NUJS. The event has been graced in the past by stalwarts like Amartya Sen, Pranab Bardhan, N. R. Narayana Murthy and Joe Stiglitz. This year was no exception, with Lord Professor Meghnad Desai delivering a lecture on “Rule of Law and Indian Democracy”.
Addressing a moderately large gathering at the Science City Mini Auditorium on 23rd December 2008, Lord Desai deconstructed the fictional syncretic narrative on which many political theorists have sought to base post-independence Indian political identity. He said that the failure of this fiction is evident from the fact that so many of us today are “hyphenated Indians”, having a regional, caste-based or religious identity which competes with our national identity. The solution, he opined, is to construct a new identity based on the legal and constitutional fact that India is a unified political entity. Respect for the rule of law and the democratic ideal would reduce fragmentation. Individual identity, as opposed to group identity, would be given precedence, and individual rights and liberties would be better safeguarded.
At the end of the one hour-long lecture, there was a brief but thought-provoking question-answer session moderated by the Guest of Honour, State Finance Minister Mr. Ashim Das Gupta. The session closed with a vote of thanks from the Registrar, and the welcome announcement that light refreshments would be served outside to members of the audience.
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