The Government of India has made higher education reform a critical priority with the HRD Ministry introducing a series of reform-oriented Bills.  Of these, the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, 2010 has garnered a great deal of attention with its focus on regulating foreign involvement in higher education in India. The Bill may play a crucial role in enhancing higher education in India, and merits praise for that, but some further steps are necessary before the maximum benefits of foreign involvement are obtained.  While the range of potential foreign involvement is vast, the Bill appears to focus much of its efforts on a particular kind of foreign involvement – the foreign university branch campus. Although much commentary has focused on specific parts of the Bill, we think it worthwhile to go one step back and ask a few preliminary questions.   Are foreign university branch campuses the best way to meet the objective of enhancing the quality and quantity of higher education in India?  Do branch campuses add substantial value over other modes of foreign involvement?  And more importantly, would top foreign universities be enthusiastic to set up branch campuses and does the 2010 Bill provide the necessary incentives for this?

A number of Government of India reports and studies suggest that foreign involvement can be an important component of the strategy to reform higher education. The potential benefits include increased access, enhanced quality of teaching and research, improved management and governance among others.  The modes of foreign involvement are also quite wide-ranging and include – Indian students receiving education via distant mode, Indian institutions receiving support from foreign universities, joint research centers, exchange programmes, and models involving an award of a joint or dual degree from both the Indian institution and the foreign institution.  Many of these are already being pursued in India in some form under current regulations.  However, the discussion around the 2010 Bill puts greater emphasis on yet another mode – the foreign university branch campus.

The focus on branch campuses raises a number of questions – in particular, would foreign universities really set up branches overseas and even if they would, what benefits would accrue to India?  First, top foreign universities are generally reluctant to set up branch campuses both because setting up many branches might reduce the exclusivity of the foreign university’s “brand” as well as concerns that the foreign university might find it difficult to maintain similar quality at the branch and home campuses.  For example, to maintain similar quality in its branch campus, a foreign university may need to send some of its faculty to that branch. This creates a human resource problem for the university because the university still needs its faculty to be at its home institution (to teach and engage in research and so forth), but it would also want some of that faculty at the branch to ensure its reputation.  When this human resource constraint is combined with the other concerns noted above and the costs of starting a branch campus, one expects that many top foreign universities would be very cautious in setting up branch campuses.  Indeed, there is considerable evidence of this reticence in that top foreign universities have few branches even in their own home countries.  Moreover, even where foreign collaborations have arisen outside of India they have often required steps to reduce both the financial and human resources costs to the top foreign university.  For example, Yale University and the National University of Singapore (NUS) have recently agreed to establish a liberal arts college in Singapore.  However, the cost of establishing and maintaining this college would be borne by NUS and the Government of Singapore with no financial cost to Yale.  Moreover, this college would award its degrees through NUS and not Yale (thereby easing the human resources and “brand” concerns).  Even with these cost reductions, this collaboration is not a branch campus (as Yale is not awarding the degrees). This underscores just how large the costs are to top foreign universities of foreign branches.  Given these costs, the 2010 Bill would probably need to provide strong incentives to top foreign universities to set up branches.  In fact, very strong incentives are often at play in those countries where branches have been set up. The 2010 Bill, however, does not provide these kinds of affirmative incentives.

More importantly, we need to ask whether branch campuses add much more value than other forms of foreign involvement for Indian higher education?  In fact, most of the advantages of a branch campus are available through other methods of foreign collaboration. For example, research can be enhanced via joint research centers and educational facilities can be expanded with foreign support to local Institutions (e.g., some IIMs and IITs early in their growth).  To the extent that branch campuses have some marginal benefits over other types of collaborations it may simply be the level of commitment of the foreign university.  But this commitment is what imposes the human resource constraint on the foreign university and makes it less likely that branches will be set up.  Viewed in this manner, the foreign university branch campus will only sometimes be desirable for both sides and even then is likely to require affirmative incentives for the foreign university.

But the low likelihood of top foreign university branch campuses does not mean that other forms of foreign involvement cannot be successful. In fact, in most countries top educational institutions are rarely built as foreign university branch campuses, but rather as institutions that develop organically. There is often explicit support from foreign universities to enhance higher education which does not require branch campuses per se. The Indian School of Business is an example of an Indian institution that developed with the support of foreign partner institutions that provided visiting faculty and assistance in developing curriculum.  Recently, the Rajya Sabha passed the Nalanda University Bill, 2010. This institution may receive substantial funding support from overseas and within India and is being directed by world renowned academics including Amartya Sen.

Further, there are other models that can enhance the quality of higher education, which require less institutional coordination and less up-front investment.  Indeed, foreign universities are often interested in collaborations that may lead to important and path-breaking research.  Research endeavors do not require branch campuses, but rather joint or collaborative research centers. The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a good example of how top notch research can be conducted without a foreign university branch campus.  This is a network of 44 affiliated professors with its headquarters at the Economics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) but its South Asia office is based at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) in Chennai. Working with government agencies, non-profit organizations, and leading corporations in India, this initiative has conducted studies relating to health, education, indoor air pollution, government corruption, and the optimal use of micro-credit. There is a strong case for encouraging such collaborations, but the 2010 Bill does little to encourage them over the status quo.

As it stands, there are two broad ways of involving foreign educational institutions – branch campuses on the one hand, and the more indirect modes on the other. The 2010 Bill makes some desirable first steps but places undue emphasis on branch campuses and provides little, if any, incentives for other kinds of foreign collaboration. Moreover, many of the benefits of branch campuses can be obtained through other forms of foreign collaboration and those other forms are less costly and more appealing to foreign universities. This, of course, does not mean that branch campuses are never helpful. They can be helpful at times, as a part of a broad mix of foreign collaboration options, but one should be pragmatic about the likelihood of a branch campus eventuating and the additional benefits it may provide over other forms of collaboration.

The fundamental purpose of the Bill is to establish appropriate political and accountability spaces to link urban governance with the people[2] by institutionalizing citizen participation.[3] This is crucial because the Bill has the potential to empower people by ensuring regular citizen participation in decision-making that affects the conditions of their lives. The Bill has been circulated by the central government and states are mandated to either enact a separate law or make appropriate amendments to their existing municipal laws. With the objective to integrate the involvement of citizens in municipal functioning in urban areas, the Bill is distinctive because it creates the institution of an Area Sabha which shall be the third and foundational tier of government within the municipality and ensure decentralization from below. An Area Sabha will elect members into the ward committees and shall start the process of political engagement by an election of an Area Sabha representative. By creating an additional platform, the Bill also assigns the role, functions, duties and responsibilities which are essential for the development of these institutions as institutions of self-government.

Highlights of the Bill

The Bill suggests a three-tier model of decentralization starting with the municipality on top followed by ward committees and Area Sabhas.  This is done at two levels. First, it details the process of selection of a representative of an Area Sabha as well as its functions, rights, power, and duties and secondly, it puts forth the mechanism of electing members into the Ward Committees and the scope of its functioning and activities. What follows is a brief examination of the key provisions of the legislation.

Constitution of Area Sabha

An Area Sabha shall include all persons registered in the electoral rolls in that area and the representatives of each Area Sabha shall be elected by the registered voters. In this context, reliance must be placed on the fact that the Bill excludes migrants, traders, squatters, pavement dwellers and other temporary residents and may therefore have a social exclusionary fall-out. While the Bill requires that an election be normally conducted by the State Election Commission to select the representatives, this is not a mandatory requirement. Thus, the Bill does not put forth an entirely democratic method of decentralization by allowing the possibility of nomination by members of the Sabha or the State Government without conducting elections. However, the 2008 Bill is relatively progressive as the original 2004 draft of the Bill did not even provide for an election process and only provided for a nomination process where the ward councillor was to select a nominee with the highest number of registered voter nominations.

Area Sabha Representatives – Their Role, Rights, Duties and Responsibilities

The Bill lays down a broad array of functions and duties of an Area Sabha Representative which include among others, the determination of the priority of welfare and the identification of the most eligible persons, assistance to the public health centres, tax mapping and mobilize voluntary labour. The representative of an Area Sabha also has a duty to suggest the location of public amenities within the area and point out the problems of deficiency in the water supply and street lighting arrangements in the Area Sabha jurisdiction. These are complex and varied responsibilities and there are concerns on the enormity of responsibility entrusted upon one representative.

Constitution of Ward Committees

At the second tier of government, the Bill envisages the creation of a ward committee in which 2/3^rd of the total members would be the Area Sabha representatives resident in that ward. The elected councillor of the ward shall be the chairman of the ward committee, and continue to represent the ward in the municipal council. The Bill provides for automatic variations in the size of a municipality or ward depending upon the population of an area and the number of polling booths.  The provision which provides for the inclusion of ten persons nominated by the municipality and representing ‘civil society’ in undemocratic and has been criticized with the alternative suggestion of using the domain expertise of such members in separate committees.

Functions, Rights and Duties of Ward Committees

The ward committees are given wide ranging functions which are similar to the responsibilities entrusted upon the Area Sabha representatives. They are given to right to obtain information regarding matters pertaining to the ward. Productions of ward plans, preparation of the budget, encouraging local level alternatives for implementation are some of the duties of the ward committees under the Act.

Activities of Ward Committees and Constitution of Sub-Committees

The activities of a ward committee can be categorized under the broad heads of planning, budgeting and maintenance of accounts. The Bill also calls for the constitution of a Ward Finance Committee to prepare the annual budget and a report on the financial transactions and a Ward Information and Statistics Committee to compile, maintain and update information pertaining to the economic scenario, land use and infrastructural developments and requirements.

Community Participation Laws in Other Countries

In order to better appreciate the structure and substance of the Nagara Raj Bill, reliance must be placed on the community participation laws and institutions in other countries. In comparison with other Asian countries, India has one of the most decentralized systems of governance at state level and councils at district, block and village level and the 73^rd and 74^th Constitutional Amendments introducing panchayats and municipalities as means for participation. In Nepal, the constitution and the Local Self Governance Act, 1999 calls for wider participation of the people by way of decentralization which takes the form of village and district development committees. Bangladesh has a similar law and follows a four-tier system of local government, at village, union, thana and district levels to ensure direct participation. As regards Southeast Asia, the Philippines with the Local Government Code of 1991 and its barangay system of local councils (which include participatory development planning initiatives), has the most elaborate legal framework for citizen participation and recognizes the vital role that civil society can play within different aspects of local governance. In Thailand, the level of citizen participation in urban governance is low due to the slow implementation of the Decentralisation Act of 1999 which was passed to create local government units and empower them to collect taxes and receive higher allocations from central government.

Latin American countries also have laws and policies to ensure community participation and this region has witnessed the incorporation of neighbourhood committees (Mexico), consultative bodies (Brazil) and territorial base organizations as platforms for citizen participation (Bolivia). Lastly, while African countries lag behind in terms of community participation laws and institutions, developed nations including USA, England, Finland and Switzerland have adopted ways to ensure direct participation of the people in policy decisions and empowerment programmes.

In Conclusion

Whilst there exist numerous platforms and systems for citizen participation that have developed organically, the Nagara Raj Bill is significant in that it provides a legal and institutional framework, thus making participation more effective and sustainable. It envisages the creation of numerous information channels that can provide enlarged access to information and the enactment of similar state legislations will ensure that an effective check and balance mechanism is in place for urban local governance. It is important to appreciate the underlying message of this Bill – respect for the opinion of local beneficiaries of welfare and public amenity schemes without the application of external standards.

[2] Ramesh Ramanathan, Federalism, Urban Decentralization and Citizen Participation, Econ. & Pol. Wkly., Feb. 24, 2007, at 679.

[3] Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, Rajya Sabha Starred Question No 357, answered on 26.04.2007.

Considering these structural and logistical barriers, it is imperative to create processes and structures that are friendly towards, and can cater to the specific needs of persons with disabilities. The enactment of the new law must be accompanied by a strong and effective individual grievance redress system which encourages persons with disabilities to move away from their reluctance to approach the justice system. This is important as legal developments around disability rights related issues will depend heavily on the nature of claims brought to the commissions and courts as well as the adjudication of these disputes.

The draft law proposes that individual redress be addressed at the level of District and State Level Commissions so as to ensure the realization of the rights recognized in the UNCRPD and the new law. The Committee drafting the law raised concerns about the realization of various rights being guaranteed under the law. To address this problem, the law aims to create decentralized quasi-judicial bodies at the district and state level. When compared to courts, these would be relatively cheap and expeditious, and their procedure would be informal. Also, there is the advantage of specialization because the Commissions would include disability experts. Therefore, while the District Commission for Persons with Disabilities will be the first point of contact for individual grievances, the appellate body shall be the State Commission.

Unlike the consumer disputes model which creates a National Commission, the appeal from the State Commissions of Disability would go to the respective High Courts. The proposed law also provides for a renewed role of the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. The Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 empowers the Chief Commissioner to look into complaints with respect to deprivation of rights of persons with disabilities. The Chief Commissioner also coordinates the work of the Commissioners and monitors the utilization of funds disbursed by the Central Government. In the domain of grievance redress, the Chief Commissioner works towards “organization of joint mobile courts of Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities and State Commissioners to ensure accessibility of redressal mechanism to the door steps of persons with disabilities.” Since the proposed law seeks to create district level grievance redress bodies, the grievance redressal function of the Chief Commissioner would be undertaken by full-time District and State Commissions. It is proposed that the Chief Commissioner for Disabilities should instead be made responsible for the effective functioning and coordination of the Commissions at the district and state level. Previously, there have been problems in ensuring the creation and sustenance of human rights commissions at the state level and a majority of states do not have full-time commissioners. In order to ensure redress on the ground, it is important that the Chief Commissioner is entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring the creation of district and state level commissions, appointment of commissioners the coordination of the activities of the district and state commissions.

In the final analysis, unless persons with disabilities find that there are bodies that take their grievances seriously and act on them, they are unlikely to see themselves as right bearing subjects.

Prior to the CRPD, rights of persons with disabilities were seen as a welfare or social policy issue. The CRPD, however, introduces a paradigm shift in the realm of disability rights from the welfare approach to a rights based approach. This means that persons with disabilities are seen as subjects rather than as mere objects of social welfare.

As a result, India is obliged to ensure and promote the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all Persons with Disabilities without discrimination of any kind on the basis of disability. In fulfilment of this international commitment, the country is obligated to enact suitable legislation in furtherance of the rights recognized in the CRPD. Presently, India’s chief disability legislation, the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 does not incorporate a number of rights recognized in the CRPD and even the rights that are recognized are not in total harmony with the principles of the CRPD.

In this background, the Union Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment appointed a Committee to draft a new disability law to replace the current Persons with Disabilities Act of 1995 with a Disability Rights Law. The committee has amongst its members disability rights activists; parents of persons with disabilities and leading organizers of services for persons with disabilities along with representatives of various state governments and ministries and the Chairpersons of the National Trust and the Rehabilitation Council of India. In view of the legal expertise required to draft the new law, the Committee appointed the Centre for Disability Studies (CDS), NALSAR University of Law to support and assist the Committee in putting together a working legal draft. The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) provides the financial expertise.

Recently, the Committee released a working draft of the law. The working draft attempts to bring within the folds of one law the diverse concerns of persons with disabilities. It proceeds on the basis that be it: life and liberty; or education and employment; the goals of full empowerment have to be reached for all persons with disabilities. Yet in acceptance of the diversity which subsists within disability, it proposes distinct and appropriate pathways be created for all persons with disabilities. Consequently even as the draft recognizes the right of  all persons with disabilities to equality before the law and prohibits any discrimination on the basis of disability; it also acknowledges that for a large number of persons with disabilities in vulnerable circumstances, legal recognition needs to be accompanied with proactive programming initiatives, to achieve full inclusion.  The working draft has been put together so that the Committee, the Disability sector, the larger civil society and the duty bearers can through a process of dialogue and deliberation arrive at a legislative text which can be accepted by all. The Committee is scheduled to meet in Delhi on January 2, 2011 to discuss the response to the working draft.

The law-making process has proved to be challenging thus far, primarily because of the competing demands of a large and diverse sector. However, in a society that has systematically discriminated against persons with disabilities and has rarely their rights; the new law will be the first step in a long-drawn movement. To borrow Gerard Quinn’s words, there is no guarantee that the new values – basically old values but novel in their application to disability – that are embedded in the law will be internalised and then operationalised. For this to happen, attitudinal change and notional change amongst the non-disabled world is essential. The new law offers an outstanding opportunity to bring about a change in societal perception as persons with disabilities ask the world around them to be rebuilt in acknowledgement of their existence and not in ignorance of it.

Although regulators of legal education have often overlooked the importance of student evaluation, as we have argued in a previous essay the Bar Council of India (BCI) noted in a June 8 press release that plagiarism is a widespread problem in Indian law schools and law colleges. This was the first official acknowledgement of a phenomenon widely recognized by teachers and students.  The BCI asked law schools to take steps to prevent plagiarism and announced that it would support the use of plagiarism detection software.

We are conducting an extensive empirical study on student evaluation and academic integrity in law schools and colleges all over India.  In addition to conducting an online survey of law students across the country, we have visited a cross section of law schools and traditional law colleges in all regions of India, where we have interviewed students and teachers about the extent and causes of plagiarism.  While our initial findings support the BCI’s conclusion that plagiarism is a pervasive problem in Indian legal education, they also indicate that the causes of this problem are deep and law schools cannot adequately address the issue with anti-plagiarism software alone.

The Emergence of Writing Requirements in Legal Education

Traditionally, student evaluation in Indian legal education has revolved around annual final exams.  Some institutions, like the University of Delhi, experimented in the 1950s and 1960s with requiring students to write papers for their courses as part of a tutorial system.  However, by the 1970s, these experiments had been abandoned and, as a rule, law faculties and colleges assessed their students solely with final examinations.

The most recent iteration of writing requirements for law students began with the establishment of National Law School of India University (“NLSIU”).  Since it was founded, NLSIU has required its students to write research projects in every course of study.

Now, most five year law programs at both private law schools and national law universities, of which there are currently fourteen, require students to write a significant number of research papers as part of their law school coursework.  Indeed, many institutions require their students to write a paper of around 5,000 words in every course that they take, with students often taking five or six courses a semester.  These schools seek to advance several objectives by requiring their students to write a significant number of research projects: improving students’ writing skills, teaching students how to perform effective legal research, increasing academic rigor, and encouraging students to learn about substantive areas of law that are not taught in class.

The Prevalence of Plagiarism

While the introduction of writing requirement in the past two decades has certainly increased the quantity of written work of students, it has also occasioned the emergence of widespread plagiarism in law schools.  Students and teachers at almost every law school that we have visited that has a writing requirement  have told us that seventy percent or more of students routinely turn in plagiarized papers (often called “copy-paste”), and most of the students with whom we have spoken to have readily acknowledged that they plagiarize some or most of their papers.

Students commonly plagiarize by copying and pasting an article from the Internet or an electronic database, by copying chunks of a few different articles and stringing them together, or by taking papers written by students at their own law school or another law school in a previous year and submitting these papers as their own.  Sometimes, and especially when they are worried that plagiarism detection software might be used, students change around some of the material they have copied or paraphrase the papers they have obtained from older students.  The BCI’s concern that plagiarism pervades legal education therefore seems well founded.

Causes of Plagiarism

Students plagiarize research papers for a wide variety of reasons, and the reasons for plagiarism vary from school to school and class to class.  Many students have told us that some, or even most, of their teachers do not read the research projects that students hand in.  Even if teachers do read them, they do not provide any helpful feedback to students.  Students have repeatedly told us that they are likely to plagiarize projects where they doubt that their teachers will take the time to read and think about their writing.  An overwhelming majority of students point out that they are most motivated to do high-quality, original work for teachers they know will thoughtfully read their papers and tell them what they have done well and poorly.

A second cause of copying is that students feel that they do not have sufficient time to write all of the projects that they are assigned.  When students are asked to write 5,000 words or more for each subject in a semester, often with deadlines clustered closely together, they feel that it is impossible to do original work in every subject.  Furthermore, at many colleges, students have class for as many as thirty-five hours per week.  Together with the time that students spend on extracurricular activities, like moot courts, law journals, and writing papers for conferences, this leaves students little time to write original research projects for all of their courses.  The length and quantity of research projects exacerbates the problem of inadequate feedback to students from teachers, as teachers are unable to closely read and comment on twenty or thirty page projects from all of the students in their classes, which can have up to 120 students.  It is unsurprising that many students who have spoken to us have said that they will do lots of work to write original papers in the one or two subjects that interest them most each semester and are fairly evaluated, but that they do not do original work for projects for other subjects.

Penalties for plagiarism tend to be light and are almost never enforced.  Even when teachers detect that a student has submitted a plagiarized project, they will most commonly respond by simply admonishing the student not to plagiarize again, reducing the student’s marks on the project, or asking the student to resubmit her or his project.  Students who are asked to resubmit their projects because of plagiarism are likely to make a few changes to their plagiarized projects to make them look a bit more original, hand in a new project plagiarized from another source, or, if they are frightened by the teacher, write a new, original project.  Even if a student receives zero marks, or very low marks, on a plagiarized project, she or he will typically still be able to pass the class by achieving a high enough grade on the final examination.  While some law schools have set up formal mechanisms to take action when plagiarism is reported to the school administration by a teacher, these mechanisms are very rarely used.  Even when such formal mechanisms consider imposing serious penalties on students for plagiarism, like requiring them to repeat a year of law school, students commonly apologize for their misconduct and the school will decide not to impose severe penalties.

Yet another cause of misconduct is that many law schools fail to clearly define what plagiarism is and teach their students how to avoid it.  While some schools have definitions of plagiarism, such definitions are often vague, and interpretation of these vague definitions may be left up to disciplinary bodies instructed only to follow “natural justice” in their interpretation of the definition.  While a handful of professors discuss plagiarism with their students, hardly any law schools provide their students with formal training about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.  Thus, students are often unaware of what plagiarism is and of how and when they must reference the materials that they use in writing projects.

Proposals to Enhance Academic Integrity

The BCI has suggested that making use of software to detect plagiarism in student papers would be an effective means of preventing students from handing in copy-paste projects.  NLSIU has also recently licensed the anti-plagiarism software Turnitin for use by its professors.  Other schools are trying out less technological solutions.  For instance, the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (“NUJS”) has reduced the quantity of writing that students are required to do in their first two years of law school and has introduced a system of “tutorials,” where fourth and fifth year students instruct first and second year students in small groups and give advice on their written projects.  Individual faculty members at many institutions have taken steps to reduce copying by their students, like providing more comprehensive and transparent feedback to students on their writing.

We believe that the use of anti-plagiarism software is only a partial solution to the problem of student copying.  We have spoken to students whose teachers use software to detect plagiarism who have told us that the threat of the software changes the manner in which they plagiarize: rather than copying and pasting without changing the original material in any way, they will copy by paraphrasing the ideas of the article, book, or website on which they are relying.  Anti-plagiarism software is unable to detect this type of plagiarism.

The one solution that is likely to be highly effective in reducing plagiarism is building up a competent, qualified, and committed legal professoriate, with teachers who have the ability and inclination to read and provide helpful feedback on student research projects.  In the institutions that we have visited, we have seen signs that the building up of an excellent faculty is beginning to happen, but this will take money, institutional and regulatory support, and a great deal of time.

However, we believe that law schools could make some changes to how they evaluate student writing that would have a more immediate impact on improving the quality of legal education.  By reducing the length of the research projects that students are required to write, or by reducing the number of projects that students are required to write every semester, these institutions could give their students more time to do quality original work and give their faculty more time to evaluate student projects and provide helpful feedback.  Second, they could monitor faculty to ensure that they grade students’ projects on the quality of their research and writing and that they provide helpful feedback to their students.  Third, law schools could clearly define plagiarism and institute formal training programs to teach students how to properly reference works from which they quote.  Finally, if law schools consistently enforced prescribed penalties for plagiarism, they could more credibly tell their students that plagiarism is not tolerated and could better deter students from plagiarizing.

While these suggestions, and any other proposals to modify the structure and procedures of student evaluation, such as NUJS’s tutorial system and BCI’s software proposal, will make it more difficult for students to plagiarize and increase the incentives for students to write original papers, they are incomplete solutions as long as students believe that their professors are unlikely to read the work that they hand in or doubt the ability of their professors to understand and fairly evaluate the projects that they write.  Thus, structural changes to law school evaluation must be accompanied by a commitment to hire more talented, enthusiastic law professors, or they will leave the problem of copying largely unchanged.

Jonathan Gingerich and Aditya Singh are Student Empirical Research Fellows with the Harvard Law School Program on the Legal Profession.  Additionally, Jonathan is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Aditya is a final year B.A.,LL.B. (Hons.) student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.  They may be contacted at indianlegaleducation@law.harvard.edu.