The age limit
The author is a counsel
‘Age is no extent to learning’. Should a credo request to veteran education? It is argued that a needed of controlling standards of veteran gift and training justifies a establishment of age boundary for enrolment in veteran degrees. Such regulation, however, arguably offends a inherent guarantee, underneath Article 19, of a right “to enter on any official contention or occupation, and to control any official trade or business.” The Lahore High Court (LHC) was recently confronted with these opposing positions in a inherent plea opposite a medication of an top age extent by Punjab University for acknowledgment to LLB. In an halt sequence upheld final week, a full dais of a LHC ruled that a age limitation should not be “a care for extenuation provisional acknowledgment in a LLB programme.”
The Court was unconvinced by a evidence that a University’s policy, reportedly adopted in settle with a suggestions of a Pakistan Bar Council (PBC), was essential for ensuring peculiarity and description of a authorised profession. The Article 19 pledge not unlimited and might be theme to regulation. The Courts have, in a past, adopted a thoughtful position towards such regulation. The higher law has on arise hold that medication of a extent age for acknowledgment to a sold grade is a reasonable and slight mode of law by educational institutions. But one contingency ask either age should be treated as a applicable pattern for assessing a person’s eligibility to extract in veteran preparation and instruction? Where earthy aptness and stamina are executive to a inlet of veteran work demanded, substantially yes. But a authorised contention does not tumble within this category. Advanced years, maturer minds and richer practice might offer as resources to a tyro and practitioner of law. Though a doubt might not have been during emanate before a Court, one contingency also ask either a PBC is efficient to recommend/impose stipulations on acknowledgment to LLB. Pursuant to territory 13(j) of a Pakistan Bar Council Act of 1973 a PBC is empowered to “promote authorised preparation and allot standards of such education”. The Act does not extend a PBC a management to establish a acknowledgment criteria for a LLB degree. The Council’s regulatory purpose is arguably applicable post-admission, when it might allot a conditions for enrolment of connoisseur lawyers as Advocates of a Superior Courts. The High Court of Punjab and Haryana in India struck down a extent age extent told by a Bar Council of India (BCI) for acknowledgment to a five-year law march on dual counts: that it drew an synthetic and undiscerning sequence between students; and that BCI lacked cunning to support and exercise such policy. Although a BCI withdrew a presentation in 2013, a age extent has recently been resurrected following a preference of a Madras High Court that a withdrawal was not in settle with claim authorised procedures.
The PBC’s regard for a deteriorating customary of authorised education, however, contingency be taken seriously. In a visualisation delivered in 2007 a Supreme Court lamented a uncontrolled, fungus expansion of law colleges in Pakistan, that mostly miss a infrastructural and egghead capacities to explain a claim customary of education. Such institutions, a Court opined, duty not as centres of training though as business houses driven usually by a inducement of larger distinction margins (PLD 2007 SC 394). The Court called for a strengthening of a eligibility criteria for acknowledgment to LLB and resolved that a “Bar in ubiquitous and a Pakistan Bar Council in sold therefore have overwhelming shortcoming to urge a peculiarity of authorised preparation since it is a possession of a grade of law that is a sufficient educational gift for entering a Bar”. The PBC has been entrusted with a formidable task. It contingency be commended for a progressing initiatives for a means of standardised, in-depth and multi-disciplinary authorised preparation in Pakistan. Earlier this year, a PBC increasing a smallest generation of a LLB grade to 5 years and instituted stricter standards for according connection to law colleges. The PBC must, however, recur a knowledge behind a age-restriction policy.
Published in The Express Tribune, Oct 9th, 2016.
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Article source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/1195757/the-age-limit/