N R Madhava Menon

Biography

Madhava Menon was born on 4 May 1935 at Thiruvananthapuram, in the South Indian state of Kerala in a Nair family to Bhavani Amma and Ramakrishna Menon as the fourth of their six children. His father, a law graduate and a Revenue Officer working for the Travancore Corporation, died succumbing to a typhoid attack, when Menon was only two years old and he was brought up by his mother, with the assistance of her brothers and sisters. His mother took up a job as a clerk at Travancore Corporation to bring up Appu, as he was known at home, and his three elder sisters and one younger brother; one of his younger brothers died in childhood.

Menon's schooling was at Sreemoolavilasam Government High School, Thiruvananthapuram from where he passed matriculation in 1949 and completed the Pre University course in 1950, when the erstwhile two-year course was realigned as a truncated one-year course. His graduate studies were at S. D. College, Alappuzha from where he passed BSc in Zoology in 1953. He also passed the Hindi Visharad course conducted by the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha simultaneously with his graduate studies. He continued his studies at Government Law College, Ernakulam, but shifted to Government Law College, Thiruvananthapuram when the college was restarted in the capital city in 1953 and has been the Student Editor of the College magazine in 1954-55. He passed the law course (BL) in 1955.

Career

Madava Menon started his career in 1955, as an apprentice to a locally known lawyer, V. Nagappan Nair, and assisted him for 13 months. The next year, in 1956, he registered at the High Court of Kerala, in Ernakulam, as a lawyer and started practice under advocate Poovanpallil Neelakandan Pillai at the district court in Thiruvananthapuram. One year later, Menon appeared for the Civil Services Examination but could get only a lower grade which made him eligible for a job at the Central Secretariat Service, in New Delhi. On the advice of his teacher and mentor, A. T. Markose, the first director of the Indian Law Institute and the author of Judicial Control of Administrative Action in India, he took up the job at the secretatriat in New Delhi.

While working at the secretariat, Menon continued his studies at Campus College located at Gole Market, affiliated to Punjab University and secured a post graduate degree (MA) in political science with distinction, in 1960. Afterwards, Menon joined Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University for further studies in law and passed the master's degree in law (LLM) and, obtaining a UGC scholarship, continued research on the topic, White Collar Crime. Teaching and doing part-time job as the warden of the Sir Syed Hall at the university, he completed his research to obtain PhD in 1965, relocated to Delhi, and got married to Rema Devi, the same year. He is the first PhD of Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University. He was also the first non- Muslim to be appointed warden of a hostel at Aligarh Muslim University.

In 1968, Menon joined his alma mater, Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University, as a professor. The subsequent move was again to University of Delhi as the Reader in the faculty of law, and later as the professor of the department. During his stint there, he received a Fulbright Scholarship from the American Council of Learned Societies and had the opportunity to present a paper on "Legal Aid" at Berkeley, California. He was a member of the Delhi University panel which liaised with universities from the United States such as Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and Yale. It was during this period that Menon published his first book, Law Relating to Government Control Over Private Enterprise, co-authored by his colleague, G. Narasimhaswamy, published through Eastern Law Book Company. Soon, his second book, Law and Property was published by N. M. Tripathy Co. He also published an article, co-authored by Clarke Cunningham in the Michigan Law Review.

Madhava Menon, while working in Delhi, is known to have organized the annual conference of the All India Law Teachers Association, in 1972, where he was elected as the Secretary General of the association. He has served as a member of the Committee for Implementing Legal Aid Schemes (CILAS), which was formed under the chairmanship of V. R. Krishna Iyer, by the Indira Gandhi government, in connection with the Garibi Hatao programme. He has also served as the Secretary of the Bar Council of India Trust. During an interlude, he worked as the principal of the Government Law College, Pondicherry. When the Bar Council of India decided to establish a new law school in early 1980s, Menon's services were sought and he is known to have set up the Bangalore-based National Law School of India University with a US$ 150,000 government grant. The school was the first in India to use the Harvard Law School's case study method, which later became the mainstream form of legal education in India. Menon worked there for 12 years as the director, moving from there after the institution gained university status.

In 1998, Menon was invited by the West Bengal Government to set up the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) on the lines of the Bangalore initiative. As the first vice-chancellor, he is known to have developed its infrastructure and educational curriculum and held the post till 2003, when the Supreme Court of India asked him to take over the responsibility as the first director of the newly formed National Judicial Academy a training centre for judges where he worked till his retirement in 2006.

Post retirement positions

After retiring from active government service in 2006, Menon was appointed by the Union Government as a member of the Commission on Centre-State Relations, a position he held till 2010. He has also served as the Chairman of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, and later, as the Chairman of the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. He headed the central government committee constituted to draft the National Policy on Criminal Justice and served as the Commission on Equal Opportunity. He is a former member of Law Commission of India and has been a member of the Committee on Restructuring of Higher Education in India as well as the Criminal Justice Reform committee. Later, Madhava Menon headed a Commission constituted as per a Supreme Court order of April 2014 to submit recommendations on government advertisements, on which report was submitted in October 2014.

Menon who is a former member of the Board of Governors of the International Organization of Judicial Trainers (IOJT), is an advisor to the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute, Canada. He holds the chair of the International Bar Association on Continuing Legal Education based at the National Law School, Bengaluru and Menon Institute of Legal Advocay Training (MILAT), a non governmental organization founded by him in Thiruvananthapuram. He is the Chancellor of the Guru Ghasidas University, Bilaspur, India and a member of the Centre for Development Studies, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, Dr. Ambedkar University of Social Sciences, Delhi, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, National Law University, Jodhpur, National Law University Odisha and the School of Law, Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Madhava Menon lives in Thiruvananthapuram with his wife, Rema Devi. The couple has a son, Ramesh, who is an engineer based in Bengaluru.

Awards and recognition

Madhava Menon, the president of the Bar Council of India during the period, 1994–98, was conferred the Living Legend of Law Award by the International Bar Association in 1994. He is also a recipient of the Rotary Club Award for Vocational Excellence and the Plaque of Honour from the Bar Council of India. He received the degree of Doctor of Law (Honoris Causa) from the National Law School of India University in 2001. He is a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and Columbia University. The Government of India included Menon, in 2003, in the Republic Day honours list, for the civilian award of Padma Shri.

Legacy

Madhava Menon's contributions are known behind the establishment of two law schools in India viz. National Law School of India University, Bangalore and West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He is credited with the conceptualization of five year integrated LLB course, in place of the earlier 3-year course. His Socratic Method of teaching, involving participation of law students in legal clinics, is considered by many as an innovation. Menon Institute of Legal Advocay Training (MILAT), a non governmental organization founded by him, is involved in promoting human rights values and judicial reforms and conducting advance training programs for lawyers.

Prof. Menon has narrated the journey of his life in his autobiography, The Story of a Law Teacher: Turning Point, besides publishing several books, articles and monographs on a variety of legal subjects. Some of his notable works are: