Indian Law Institute

The Indian Law Institute (ILI) is a university conducting legal training and research, based across the road from the Supreme Court of India in Delhi. The ILI was officially opened in 1956 by the first president of India, Rajendra Prasad, with the first prime minister of the country, Jawaharlal Nehru, in attendance at the ceremony.

The university offers masters (LLM) and PhD degrees in law, as well as a number of postgraduate diploma courses covering different aspects of the legal system. The university has one of the largest legal libraries in Asia, with over 80,000 titles available.

Each year, the ILI publishes the Annual Survey of Indian Law, which reviews the latest developments in the legal world, while another publication, Journal of the Indian Law Institute, is released every quarter.

The university treats the Chief Justice of India, currently Ranjan Gogoi, as its president and the country’s law minister as its vice president. Funding for the university comes from the Indian government, publication sales and fees from ILI’s 3,000 members. Scholarships are available for both financially challenged and academically excellent students.

Memorandums of understanding have been signed with a number of international organisations and institutions, including Harvard University and the University of Houston. The ILI is also regularly commissioned by the Indian government to conduct legal research programmes.

The late feminist and lawyer Lotika Sarkar, who was the first Indian woman to graduate from Cambridge University, taught criminal law at ILI through the 1980s and 1990s.