Neelakanta Ramakrishna Madhava Menon (4 May 1935 – 8 May 2019) was an Indian civil servant, lawyer and legal educator, considered by many as the father of modern legal education in India. He is the founder of National Law Universities system and first director of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) and the National Judicial Academy, Bhopal and the founder-vice-chancellor of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS). He has also served as Chairman of Indian Statistical Institute from 2002 to 2003.
Menon was awarded the Padma Shri in 2003 and Padma Bhushan in 2020 by the Government of India.
He was a member of the Law Commission of India and also member of several expert Committees including on Legal Aid (1973), Civil Services Examination Reform (2000-2001), and Criminal Justice Reform (2002-2003), Police Act Drafting Committee (2005-2006) and the Committee on Draft National Policy on Criminal Justice (2006-2007)
and Committee on Restructuring of Higher Education in India appointed by the Government of India. He was a Central Secretariat Service officer. The new academic block of NLSIU is named after him.
Biography
Menon was born on 4 May 1935 at Trivandrum, Kerala in a middle-class Nair family to Bhavani Amma and Ramakrishna Menon as the fourth of their sixchildren. He was named after his maternal uncle. He also passed the Hindi Visharad course conducted by the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha simultaneously with his graduate studies. reportedly after battling liver cancer.
Career
thumb|right|N.R Madhava Menon presenting report of the committee on draft National Policy on Criminal Justice to the 25th [[Minister of Home Affairs (India)|Home Minister of India Shivraj Patil in New Delhi 2007.]]
Law and civil service
Menon started his career in 1955, as an apprentice to a locally known lawyer, V. Nagappan Nair, and assisted him for thirteenmonths. 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 and got placed into 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 Central Secretariat in New Delhi. He was also the first non- Muslim to be appointed warden of a hostel at Aligarh Muslim University. 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. a position he held till 2010.
Menon was a member of the Board of Governors of the International Organization of Judicial Trainers (IOJT), was an advisor to the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute, Canada. a non governmental organization founded by him in Thiruvananthapuram. 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
Awards and recognition
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. and the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.
Books, research papers and journals
Menon is the author of several books, research papers and journals. A complete list of papers, books and journals authored by him is given below.
Books
- Rule of Law in a Free Society (Publisher: Oxford University Press; )
- Nehru and Indian Constitutionalism (Publisher: Indus Source Books; )
- Reflections on Legal and Judicial Education (Publisher: Universal Law Publishing; )
- A Handbook on Clinical Legal Education (Publisher: Eastern Book Company; )
Research papers
- The Transformation of Indian Legal Education- A Blue Paper (Publisher: Harvard Law School) Link
Menon wrote his autobiography, The Story of a Law Teacher: Turning Point, His notable works include:
- Law and Poverty
- Action Plan on Recommendations of the National Committee on Women Prisoners
- Legal Aid and Legal Education
- Population and Law: Justics for All
- Education and Public Health
- A Training Manual for Police on Human Rights
- Feminism and Law
- Clinical Legal Education
- Law Relating to Government Control Over Private Enterprise
Books featuring Menon
- Turning Point - The Story of a Law Teacher : Memoirs of Padmashree Prof. N.R. Madhava Menon (Publisher: Universal Law Publishing Company; )
See also
- National Law School of India University
- National Judicial Academy
- West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences
- Indian Statistical Institute
- Centre for Development Studies
- Law Commission of India