It is rare in the history of legal education of any country that an academic is invited to establish a law school which is different from the ordinary, which aims at facilitating the delivery of justice to all sections of people, which conceives law as an instrument of social development and which seeks to impart a sense of social responsibility on every student and teacher associated with the institution. I am lucky to have got such an opportunity once in 1986 which resulted in the now prestigious National Law School of India, Bangalore and a second time in 1999 with my appointment as the Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Juridical Sciences at Calcutta (NUJS). Though the sponsors of NUJS expected replication of the Bangalore model, I am inclined to aspire for something different, perhaps nearer to the goal of ''justice education'', focusing more on people and their aspirations from the legal system. What should be the foundational principles of such an enterprise and is it realisable in the present context?

By ''juridical sciences'' we mean the entire range of knowledge in the realm of physical/natural sciences or social sciences as they impact on man in society. ''Justice'' is perceived as not just a scheme based on a set of rights and duties, but as an inter-relational experience to be structured according to societal values and to be measured in terms of willing obedience to law and respect for human rights.

There are several ways in which the law school under reference can be conceived which, in turn, will determine its structure and functioning. One possibility is to look at the society around, identify the major problems which contribute to injustices and address the role of law, lawyers and courts in containing them. This is the needs assessment-cum-problem-solving approach. In doing so one has to be careful in the selection of standards in measuring injustices and the position one takes on the role of law in social change. A second approach is to articulate the goals of law education from the Constitution and from accumulated experience and relate them to the perceived functions of a justice-oriented law school. Of course, here also, there is scope for innovation in objects and methods, towards increasing the justice content and social relevance of education. This is the goal-oriented, trial and error approach. A still another approach could be to look at what is being done in some of the reputed law schools around the world and pick such of those aspects appealing to one's perception of justice education and structure a curriculum and an institutional framework for the job in hand. Each one has its merits and de-merits. Furthermore, there are situational constraints which impinge not only on the choice of the model but also the extent to which it can be operationalised.