GAJE Co-presidents Lisa Bliss and Filip Czernicki announced the establishment of the Menon Award for the Advancement of Justice Education Worldwide, named in honor of the late Professor Dr. N.R. Madhava Menon who passed away on May 8, 2019. The announcement was part of a program celebrating Dr. Menon during the opening plenary session of the 10th Worldwide Conference at Bandung. Widely known as “the father of modern legal education in India,” Dr. Menon was devoted throughout his career to the twin causes of social justice and legal education. As both a professor and a legal education reformer, he sought to integrate legal aid and legal education by championing clinical legal education. In India, he established a system of national law schools with a curriculum formed around educating law students for social justice; through international collaborations with legal educators around the world he was a leader in promoting a global clinical movement. He was thus remembered by a panel of colleagues and friends as the “guiding light” GAJE.
Frank Bloch, Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt University (USA), was named by the GAJE Board of Directors as the inaugural recipient of the Menon Award. Professor Bloch was among an international group of law teachers who founded GAJE in the late 1990s and has been a part of the GAJE leadership throughout its history. Together with Dr. Menon, he co-chaired GAJE’s Inaugural Worldwide Conference held in Thiruvananthapuram, India, in 1999.
10th Worldwide GAJE Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia on 4-10 December 2019
GAJE’s 10th Worldwide Conference, celebrating GAJE’s 20th Anniversary, took place in Bandung, Indonesia from the 4th through the 10th of December 2019 on the campus of Pasundan University. As with past worldwide conferences, the conference consisted of two parts: a General Conference, with plenaries and concurrent sessions on various themes and topics (4-8 December), and a Training-of-Trainers (TOT) workshop on practical aspects for implementing justice education, including clinical teaching methods (9-10 December).
Further information about the conference is available on the current 10th Conference Page; a full report on the conference will be posted on the Past Conferences Page when the report has been completed.