From hallowed to hollowed

"If you want to pursue law as a career, Faculty of Law, Delhi University is the place to go."

Those were the words of my teacher, spoken with quiet certainty, as I stood at the threshold of choosing a path.

The Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, has long been more than an institution. It has been a place where the law was not merely studied, but felt, argued and lived.

What separated it from others was never infrastructure or rank; it was the culture. It was the quiet intensity of students who believed the courtroom was a moral arena and of faculty who treated every lecture as a matter of civic consequence. Studying or teaching law at DU was never reduced to syllabi, attendance registers or the bare minimum of a degree. It was, at its finest, a vocation.

From legendary academicians like Prof Upendra Baxi, Prof Lotika Sarkar and Prof PK Tripathi, to stalwart lawyers like Arun Jaitley and Kapil Sibal, to Chief Justices of the Supreme Court and High Courts across the country  -the spirit of law once lived here, rooted in its legacy and alive in its practice.

Sadly, that spirit appears to be dimming.

The question of what this institution stands for today was brought into sharp relief by a matter of considerable national importance.

In Bhumika Trust v. Union of India & Ors, the Supreme Court, on January 15, 2026, invited suggestions from High Courts and law universities on one of the most consequential debates in recent legal memory - the mandatory three-year practice rule for entry into the judicial services. The rule, which requires law graduates to complete three years of Bar practice before appearing for the civil judge examination, has ignited widespread discussion about access, equity and the future of the subordinate judiciary.

With over 9,000 students enrolled at the Faculty of Law, many of whom aspire to the judiciary and are directly affected by this rule, a response from the institution was not merely expected. It was, by any reasonable measure, a matter of institutional duty.

Was it forthcoming? It was not.

The petition that brought this question before the Supreme Court was filed by an NGO called Bhumika Trust, through its President, Advocate Jayant Singh Raghav ,  a 2025 graduate of this very institution. The Faculty of Law trained the hand that knocked on the Court's door, but could not find its own voice when the Court asked for one.

On February 26, owing to the low volume of responses received and requests for additional time, the Supreme Court extended the window for submission of suggestions. The silence from the Faculty of Law, at this stage, was already glaring.

What followed was a measure of the students' own resolve. A formal representation was submitted to the Dean by the Student Union of Campus Law Centre, urging the administration to place before the Supreme Court the views and concerns of its student body  -  the very constituency most immediately imperiled by the Rule's implications. It was a request made in good faith, through proper institutional channels, by students who believed that their institution still cared.

Yet, not every student who felt the weight of this silence chose to speak through a formal representation. Some did not speak because they simply trusted  that an institution of this stature would, without being asked, do what was right. Others had long stopped expecting anything; their faith quietly eroded by a pattern of institutional indifference that predated this moment. And there were those who hesitated, unsure whether a student's voice carried enough standing to compel administrative action. But whatever their reason  -  faith, resignation, or restraint  -  none of it absolved the institution of its responsibility. The submission of suggestions to the Supreme Court on a matter directly concerning its students was never the students' burden to demand.

It was the administration's duty to discharge.

On March 13, law universities across the country stepped forward. NALSAR University of Law, Jamia Millia Islamia, NLU Jodhpur and several others submitted their suggestions to the Court . These were  thoughtful, researched and substantive representations reflecting the anxieties and aspirations of their students.

The Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, was not among them.

The absence was felt. Students who had drafted a formal request, who had waited in good faith, were left to ask a question that deserved an answer: why, even after an explicit written plea from the Student Union, did the administration neither solicit student opinion nor submit a representation to the highest court in the land on a matter that concerned them so directly?

This was not a procedural lapse. It was, to many, a statement of priorities.

Nor is this an isolated incident. In recent times, the administration has displayed a troubling tendency to remain conspicuously absent from matters of substance, while directing its energies toward those of ceremony. The pattern is difficult to ignore and more difficult to defend.

One is left to ask: is this the same institution that once shaped the present and future of the legal profession? The institution that was nurtured by the radical intellectual courage of Prof Baxi, the fierce commitment to justice of Prof Sarkar and the reformist vision of Prof Tripathi and other legal scholars and institution-builders who understood that a law school's highest obligation is not to its administration, but to the law itself?

An institution shaped by such inheritance cannot afford the luxury of indifference. Not on matters like these.

These questions must be put to those who govern  -  firmly, publicly and without apology. It is, after all, the questions that are raised that bring about change. And it is institutions that stop asking them that begin to die quietly.

Tushar Malhotra is a first-year student at the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi.