National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam (NLUJA or NLUJAA) is a

National Law University National Law Universities (NLU) are public law schools in India, founded pursuant to the second-generation reforms for legal education sought to be implemented by the Bar Council of India. The first NLU was the National Law School of India Univ ...

located in

Guwahati Guwahati (, ; formerly rendered Gauhati, ) is the biggest city of the Indian state of Assam and also the largest metropolis in northeastern India. Dispur, the capital of Assam, is in the circuit city region located within Guwahati and is the ...

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. It was established in 2009 through an Act passed by the State Legislature of Assam (Assam Act XXV of 2009) as a public university dedicated to the field of legal education. The admissions for the first batch were made in 2011 which passed out in 2016. The first vice-chancellor of the university was Gurjeet Singh, currently the university is managed by the newly appointed Vice-Chancellor

V. K. Ahuja V. K. Ahuja is a Senior Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, India He is presently serving as Director of Indian Law Institute (Deemed to be University), New Delhi, India, he has also served as Vice-Chancellor of National Law U ...

succeeding J.S. Patil and Vijender Kumar in 2021.

History

The northeastern region of India has traditionally been one of the underdeveloped and marginalized areas of the Indian nation. In 2009, despite the presence of a High Court for the eight ‘Seven Sister’ states, viz., Arunachal Pradesh, Assam,

Manipur Manipur () ( mni, Kangleipak) is a state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It also borders two regions of Myanm ...

Meghalaya Meghalaya (, or , meaning "abode of clouds"; from Sanskrit , "cloud" + , "abode") is a states and union territories of India, state in northeastern India. Meghalaya was formed on 21 January 1972 by carving out two districts from the state of As ...

Mizoram Mizoram () is a state in Northeast India, with Aizawl as its seat of government and capital city. The name of the state is derived from "Mizo people, Mizo", the endonym, self-described name of the native inhabitants, and "Ram", which in the Mizo ...

Nagaland Nagaland () is a landlocked state in the northeastern region of India. It is bordered by the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh to the north, Assam to the west, Manipur to the south and the Sagaing Region of Myanmar to the east. Its capital cit ...

, Sikkim, Tripura in Guwahati; the scenario of legal education in the area remained far from the potential of possible proliferation of excellence in the realm of legal profession. Thus, to fulfill the aspirations of the people, the

Government of Assam The Government of Assam is the subnational government of Assam, a state of India. It consists of the Governor appointed by the President of India as the head of the state, currently Jagdish Mukhi. The head of government is the Chief Minister, ...

decided to initiate and facilitate the establishment of a Law University in Assam. This led to the establishment of The National Law University and Judicial Academy (NLUJAA), Assam by the Government of Assam by way of passing the National Law School and Judicial Academy, Assam Act, 2009 (Act No. XXV of 2009). This Act was later amended as the National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam (Amendment) Act, 2011 (Act II of 2012), wherein the word ‘School’ was replaced by the word ‘University’.

Campus

The campus of National Law University and Judicial Academy, spread over 60 acres, is situated in the locality of Amingaon, a municipality on the outskirts of Guwahati City. The campus houses, the Academic Building, Administrative Building as well as the halls of residence for boys and girls. It also houses the Conference Hall, the Moot Court Hall, the Dining Hall, a Multipurpose Gymnasiums and the library. In its library, the university has a collection of more than nine thousand printed titles and more than two hundred e-books covering law, social sciences and humanities. It also has a collection of Law Journals, both printed and electronic. The library also has access to

LexisNexis LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer informa ...

, Manupatra,

Westlaw Westlaw is an online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of case law, state and federal statu ...

, SCC Online, Cambridge Book Online,

JSTOR JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...

Hein Online HeinOnline (HOL) is a commercial internet database service launched in 2000 by William S. Hein & Co., Inc. (WSH Co), a Buffalo, New York publisher specializing in legal materials. The company began in Buffalo, New York, in 1961 and is currently b ...

, and Elgar Online.

Centres for excellence

The university has established nineteen fully equipped centres of excellence for legal studies. These centres are unique in its approach to legal research, credence provided by the fact that, CARTHL established in collaboration with ICRC is a first of a kind in North East India, CCR established by UNICEF is only the second such centre on Child Rights in India after NLSIU; CIPRS is the second centre on IPR after Tezpur University in North East India, a few notable ones. * Centre for Advanced Research in International Humanitarian Law ARTHL* Centre for Child Rights CR* Centre for Constitutional Law and Governance

CLG A galaxy cluster, or a cluster of galaxies, is a structure that consists of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound together by gravity, with typical masses ranging from 1014 to 1015 solar masses. They are the second-l ...

* Centre for Corporate Law and Good Governance CLGG* Centre for Criminal Justice Administration and Human Rights * Centre for Disability Rights and Health Laws * Centre for Disaster Management and Law * Centre for Environment Law EL* Centre for Family Law and Customary Studies * Centre for Human Rights and Refugee Law * Centre for International Law IL* Centre for IPR Studies IPRS* Centre for Law Language and Culture * Centre for Natural Resources Laws * Centre for Peace Resolution Studies * Centre for Post-Graduate Legal Studies PGLS* Centre for Socio-Legal Research and Gender Studies SLRGS* Centre for Studies of North East, South Asia and South East Asia Legal Studies * Centre for Tribal and Land Rights

Rankings

In 2021 the institute was ranked 20 among the law universities by NIRF.

Academics

Academic programmes

Undergraduate

NLUJA, Assam offers B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) Five-Year Integrated Programme. It follows the semester system. The entire five-year course is divided into ten semesters.

Post-graduate courses

NLUJA, Assam offers One Year Post-Graduation Course (LL.M.) with specialization in: * Business Law *

Constitutional Law Constitutional law is a body of law which defines the role, powers, and structure of different entities within a State (polity), state, namely, the executive (government), executive, the parliament or legislature, and the judiciary; as well as th ...

Consumer Protection Law Consumer protection is the practice of safeguarding buyers of goods and services, and the public, against unfair practices in the marketplace. Consumer protection measures are often established by law. Such laws are intended to prevent business ...

Criminal Law Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law i ...

* Environmental Law * Human Rights Law *

Intellectual Property Law Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

International Law International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...

The institution had been a partner institute for Surana & Surana National Trial Advocacy Moot Court Competition. The institute concluded an MoU with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute. The institute has concluded various MoUs with different institutes of national as well as international repute, for the purpose of teaching and training in the fields of law and administration, Assam Administrative Staff College, India International Institute of Diplomacy and Election Management (a constituent institute of Election Commission of India). The Law University became the first NLU to formalize an MoU with IDIA (An organization for teaching and training the underprivileged section of the society). Recently it ranked 2 under NALSAR.

Ph.D.

NLUJA, Assam also has a research degree programme and around 15 scholars are currently working towards their doctoral degrees.

Publications

University currently publishes two official bi-annual journals one run by student editors and other by faculty editors. ''National Law University Assam Law Review (NLUALR)'' is a four-student edited Journal and ''National Law University Assam Law and Policy Review (NLUALPR)'' is a faculty edited peer reviewed journal. The university started its own student magazine, ''"The Lost Stories"'' in May 2017 showcasing the creative skills from the field of photography, literature, and poetry. In 2019, the students started NLUJA Echoes as the official literary magazine of the university. The Centre for Child Rights (CCR) publishes a bi-annual peer reviewed journal titled ''Child Rights Law and Policy Review.''

References

{{Coord, 26.1727, 91.7554, type:edu_region:IN-AS, display=title Law schools in Assam National Law Universities Universities in Assam Universities and colleges in Guwahati State universities in India Educational institutions established in 2009 2009 establishments in Assam