The Government Law College, Mumbai, (GLC Mumbai), India, is a public law school located in Churchgate, Mumbai in Maharashtra. Founded in 1855, it is the oldest law school in Asia. The college, affiliated to the University of Mumbai, is run by the Government of Maharashtra.
The college offers the five-years integrated undergraduate law degree i.e., the B.A. LL.B., a three-years post-graduate law course i.e., the LL.B., a post-graduate law degree i.e., the LL.M., and a Ph.D. in Law through its Research Centre. The college also delivers post-graduate diplomas and certificate courses.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Pratibha Patil, the former President of India, and six Chief Justices of India, as well as several judges of the Supreme Court of India and other High Courts of the country are alumni of the college. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, served as the Principal of the College from 1935, until 1937.
History
Founding Prior to the 1850s, India had no formal institution dedicated to legal education. Sir Thomas Erskine Perry, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Bombay from 1847 to 1852, delivered informal lectures on law after court hours to a small circle of practitioners and officials, but this arrangement offered no structured or regularised training. The main purpose of these lectures was to create a handful of natives who could assist the British administration with basic administrative and legal work.
It was only in 1852, when Sir Perry left for England, that a chair in jurisprudence, named the Perry Professorship of Jurisprudence was established at the Elphinstone Institution at Fort, Mumbai. This chair in jurisprudence ultimately transformed to the Government Law School.
Established historical accounts hold that it is the first institution of its kind in India, though legal-education scholarship notes some disagreement over this claim relative to the Madras Law College, which was established as an independent institution in 1891, much after GLC Mumbai. What is not disputed is that the Government Law School, the earliest form of the college, was established in 1855 at the Elphinstone Institution, with its first course reportedly drawing more than 100 students.
The parallel codification of law elsewhere in India during this period further underscored the need for formal legal training. In Bombay, Governor Mountstuart Elphinstone championed the Elphinstone Code of 1827, a codification of civil and criminal procedure for the Bombay Presidency. Elsewhere in India, similar efforts produced the Civil Procedure Code (1859), the Indian Penal Code (1860), and the Indian Contract Act (1872). This broader movement toward codified, systematised law added further impetus to the establishment of formal legal education in India through institutions such as the Government Law College.
The college became affiliated with the University of Bombay in September 1860, roughly three years after the university itself was established. The college was one of the first five colleges to be affiliated with the University, others being Elphinstone College (affiliated in 1860, Grant Medical College (affiliated in 1860), Wilson College (affiliated in 1861), and St. Xavier's College (affiliated in 1869).
Transition to Full-Time Status The college continued to operate as a part-time, evening institution for several decades from the Elphinstone Institution building. It was not until 1938 that it was converted to a full-time institution, at which point it was also allocated the plot of land opposite Churchgate railway station that it continues to occupy today.
Monopoly over Legal Education in Maharashtra For nearly seven decades after its founding, Government Law College held an uninterrupted monopoly over formal legal education in the Bombay Presidency: from 1855 until 1924, it was the only law college in what is now Maharashtra. This changed in 1924, when the Indian Law Society established ILS Law College in Poona, initially affiliated, like GLC, to the University of Bombay.
ILS Law College remained under the University of Bombay's umbrella for the next quarter-century. That changed on 10 February 1949, when the University of Poona (now Savitribai Phule Pune University) was established under the Poona University Act, passed by the Bombay legislature the previous year. ILS Law College transferred its affiliation to the newly formed university, severing its link to the University of Bombay system.
With ILS Law College's departure from the University of Bombay system, Government Law College once again became the sole law college affiliated to the University of Bombay in the city; a position it held until 1955, when Kishinchand Chellaram (K. C.) Law College was founded in Churchgate by the Hyderabad (Sind) National Collegiate Board, an educational trust established by the Sindhi community that had relocated to Bombay following Partition.
The practical consequence of this history is notable: any lawyer who received a formal legal education at a law college in Bombay between 1855 and 1924, or between 1949 and 1955, did so at Government Law College, since it was, for those two extended periods, the only institution of its kind operating in the city.
Post-Independence Developments Following India's independence in 1947, alumni of Government Law College played a foundational role in shaping the country's constitutional and judicial architecture. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, who had taught at the college as a professor from 1928 and served as its Principal from 1935, was elected Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly on 29 August 1947, and steered the drafting of the Constitution of India to its adoption in 1949.
In the judiciary, Justice H. J. Kania, who had earned his LL.B. and LL.M. from the college in 1912 and 1913 respectively, was appointed the first Chief Justice of India in 1950, having earlier served as Chief Justice of the Federal Court of India from 1947.
College Crest and Campus Crest The need for a formal college crest was felt in 1932–33, and its design was undertaken under the personal supervision of Captain W. E. Gladstone Solomon, then Director of the Sir J. J. School of Art, who headed the art school from 1919 to 1936.
The crest depicts the traditional blindfolded figure of Lady Justice, holding a sword and a set of scales; the sword denoting the relentlessness of the law, and the scales its impartiality. At her feet sits the crowned lion from the coat of arms of the old logo of the University of Bombay, an acknowledgement of the college's affiliation with the university. A banner above the shield carries a Sanskrit inscription, dharmo viśvasya jagataḥ pratiṣṭhā — a verse meaning "Dharma is the foundation of the entire world," which recurs across ancient Sanskrit literature, including the Karna Parva of the Mahabharata. The college's Latin motto, Ne Vile Fano which translated to "Let no evil enter" in English, appears on a separate banner beneath the shield.
Campus The college occupies a site on 'A' Road, opposite Churchgate railway station in South Mumbai, allocated to it by the Government of Bombay in 1938 following its conversion to a full-time institution. The campus sits in close proximity to the Bombay High Court and the prominent downtown and central business district of Nariman Point which houses many legal institutions and prominent law firms and law chambers of the city.
The main college building is designed in the Art Deco style characteristic of the Churchgate and Marine Drive precinct, one of the largest collections of Art Deco architecture in the world. Its facade features curvilinear balconies, horizontal and vertical banding, and "eyebrows" — projecting horizontal ledges above the windows that shield the interior from Mumbai's monsoon rain and harsh sun, a device widely used in the city's Art Deco buildings of the 1930s.
Since 1988, the college has operated an annexe building alongside the original structure, housing additional classrooms and a reference library. A marble plaque commemorating B. R. Ambedkar is installed near the college's entrance, inside the building on the ground floor, and the Preamble to the Constitution of India is engraved in stone on the south facing wall at the entrance.
The campus includes a canteen, a basketball court, and a mini gymkhana located at the rear of the auditorium, used for indoor games such as table tennis and carrom. Students also make use of the nearby Oval Maidan and the University of Mumbai ground for outdoor sports such as cricket and football.
Academics Curriculum Affiliated to the Mumbai University, the Government Law College follows the semester system, and provides the 5-year integrated BLS-LLB as well as the 3-year LLB course.
The 5-year course consists of a 2-year foundation in the liberal arts/sociology, followed by the 3-year curriculum of core legal subjects, which are common to the 3-year law course.
Most of the 3-year law subjects are taught by practising lawyers, rather than academics, most of them teaching part-time. The teaching, pedagogy, and curriculum for the three-year program is thus geared more towards practical professional law, rather than theoretical, academic law.
Current faculty include academics such as Prof Homer Pithawala as well as advocates practising in the higher judiciary.
Many of the more prominent faculty are alumni of the college.
Admissions Admission to the college is through the Maharashtra Common Entrance Test - the MH LAW CET, which was introduced in 2016.
The entrance exam is compulsory for admissions for law colleges in Maharashtra, and tests legal aptitude, general knowledge, language, and reasoning skills.
85% of the seats are reserved for candidates from Maharashtra, and an overall reservation for various college seats is as high as 50%.
In 2018, over 23,000 students appeared from Maharashtra, and 16,000 students appeared for the entrance test from the rest of the country for the 3-year course.
The total number of seats are 240, and typical cut off ranks for students from the "Maharashtra General Category" is an all-India Rank of 200, while those of students from outside Maharashtra is about 120.
The Five years law course offered by the college is also considered to be one of the best in the country in terms of internships and industry exposure.
In 2018, over 15,000 students appeared for the 5-year MH LAW CET admissions test. Typical cut offs for 240 BLS-LLB seats are at All India Rank 250 for Maharashtra students belonging to the "General Category".
Academic programmes Five Year Law Course The B.L.S. LL.B. program is a 10-semester full-time course open to students right out of high school (Class XII in the Indian system). The first 2 years (4 semesters) constitute a 'pre-law' course where the student is taught social-science subjects like economics, political science, history, English and legal language, logic, etc.
In the next three years core law subjects, like contracts, family law, labour laws, etc. are dealt with.
In their 8th and 10th semester, the students have the option of choosing some particular subjects along with some compulsory subjects. A total of 4 practical training papers are compulsory for all the students.
The BLS or the Bachelor of Legal Sciences degree is awarded to the students by the University of Mumbai after successful completion of the 3rd year and the LLB degree is awarded after completion of 5 years.
Students are eligible to exit with a Bachelor's degree in Legal Studies (BLS) at the end of 6 semesters, but cannot practise law unless they complete the course in its entirety.
Three Year Law Course