Professor Stephen P Marks of Harvard University has advocated that law can be a tool for change & its studies can prepare one to be a problem-solver & an agent for positive change in a time of new challenges, such as climate change.
Marks, a Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health & Human Rights, Harvard University, was speaking Wednesday at Sonepat-based O P Jindal University, which launched the India’s 1st multi-disciplinary undergraduate programme in Legal Studies.
The professor, who spoke on ‘Changing the World Through Law’ drew the students’ attention to law’s ambiguous relations to justice as reflected in existing power relations as also a force for social change.
“The study of law can prepare you to make lots of money helping those with money protect & expand their wealth, but, more importantly the study of law can also prepare you to be a problem-solver & an agent for positive change in a time of new challenges, such as climate change,” Marks said.
He observed that law could both maintain existing oppression & should be resisted & disobeyed, as advocated by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., & Nelson Mandela as he learned by working in Washington for a Senator who played a leading role in the adoption of the Civil Rights & Voting Rights Acts.
Articulating on the role of lawyers in the freedom struggle, Founding VC of the University Raj Kumar said they played a central role in the drafting of the Indian Constitution & the Assembly proceedings clearly demonstrate the part played by the lawyers in elaborating the basic concepts of freedom, equality & justice.
The VC, who is also the Dean of the Jindal Global Law School, said the notion of rule of law has been deeply embedded in our civilisational heritage, historical context, freedom struggle, & development of our democracy & our institutions.
The university has now launched a BA Honours programme in Legal Studies which gives an opportunity to all high school students to pursue study of law, even if they may not be interested to become a lawyer, he said.
“Our freedom movement demonstrated that many leading figures of the Indian national movement were lawyers who led the freedom movement from the front & fought colonial rule & injustice, precisely due to their belief in the importance of a rule of law society & their consciousness of the importance of freedom & justice.
“But they also recognised that law could be an instrument of oppression & hence, it was important to have limits on law & the exercise of power through the Constitution, independent judiciary & other institutions,” said Kumar.
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