When in court, one should never be happy to hear the word “academic” used to describe either something one has said, or worse, oneself. It is not just an indication but a directive to abandon the point immediately and move on to matters of actual significance. The word can appear anywhere: from judges saying, “All that is academic, you please come to the point, counsel”, to opposing counsel seeking to deflate a submission, “What my learned friend has touched upon is only academic and need not concern this court”, to seniors impatiently telling their briefing counsels, “This is all academic, you bring me to the flesh and blood of the matter.” Unfortunately, for academics (noun), when judges or lawyers declare a statement academic (adjective), it essentially means it has failed the test of relevance. For two litigators who grew up with academics for parents (both academics for Sumedha Ray Sarkar and one academic and one lawyer for Katyayani Suhrud), witnessing the word “academic” being wielded like a fly swatter has been a disorienting albeit amusing experience. The confusion deepened when one realised that the very same profession that dismisses what is academic addresses one’s rival and opponent as learned friend, a decidedly academic adjective and turn of phrase. Then why does the same profession continue to use the word academic to indicate irrelevance? Why do we say it? How did we start saying it? And is there any need for it? The semantic rise and fall of “academic”The word academic originated from Plato’s Academy, established in 387 BCE. An academic was one who taught or studied at the academy. By the late sixteenth century, it came to mean a member of a university or college, invested in intellectual research and education. Unfortunately for the word, it went through a process of pejoration. As philosophy as a discipline ebbed into disuse and fell into the territory of being seen as unending musings of those with far too much time on their hands, the word “academic” suffered the same fate. There are degrees to the pejoration; “impractical” perhaps being the kindest of the lot, and “inconsequential” and “irrelevant” perhaps the harshest. This pejoration is clearly recognised by dictionaries. Both Oxford Learner’s and Cambridge define academic as divorced from practicality, involving reading and studying rather than practical or technical skills. One ticklish example under “not important because it is based only on possibilities” is, “Which diamond ring you like more is purely academic, because I can’t afford either one.” Funnily enough, the law has an entire vocabulary built for conveying that something is not relevant – ratio, obiter, infructuous, facts, issues. For instance, an irrelevant argument can simply be dismissed as “not in issue” or simply further as just that – “irrelevant”. In fact, upon looking closer, one finds that litigation recognises the academic side to lawyers and the profession. To begin at the very beginning, our sentences often start with addressing each other as “learned” friend. To call someone “learned” refers to something beyond knowing the matter at hand. It refers to the ability to think widely and deeply, to have gained perspective and foresight informed by the law’s context and history, and to have “learnt” one’s discipline and acquired knowledge, which may very well be thought of as an academic ability. It is no doubt a possibility that lawyers learn to address one another as “learned” simply as a matter of habit, without pausing to dwell on why they do so. However, the fact that this phrase has stuck and has not been replaced by “my friend”, “my colleague”, “my senior” or “my opponent”, is an indicator that despite the shunning of that which is “academic”, the legal profession continues to use the word “learned” as a marker of respect. Disdain in contextIn that case, why are academics just a bit less likely to be “learned” friends to lawyers? Historically lawyers and academics have been documented – in research conducted by academics of course – as not seeing eye-to-eye. Lawyers believe that without the threat of a demolition notice or an arrest warrant hanging over one’s head, the questions academics ask are of no immediate consequence. Their long-drawn out thoughts and theories are self indulgent – a recurring characteristic of scholarship where academics seem to be speaking only to each other. On the other hand, academics often accuse litigators of lacking in intellectual rigour, honesty, and foresight, with no concern for how the law is evolving beyond the brief in front of them. The academic world’s disdain for lawyers is visible when practitioners struggle to secure teaching positions equivalent to those of their academic peers with the same post qualification experience. However, for anyone familiar with both worlds, it defies common sense that there should be any hostility between the two. Both have distinct but complementary roles to play in the conceptualisation of the legal system, and their differences stem more from the demands of the university and the courtroom than from any real incompatibility. For academics, distance from active litigation enables them to undertake long-term projects. While the problems identified through academic research may appear hypothetical in the moment, the ability to step back, synthesize, and objectively predict the long-term consequences of a statute or a line of judgments can be immensely valuable for informing future practice. Similarly, the classroom is a space with ‘no stupid questions’; teachers are dutybound to make time for curiosity in all its forms, and to adapt to different ways of learning in order to lay strong intellectual (and even ethical) foundations. In the courtroom, theory is meant to be applied strategically, with regard to the bench hearing the matter, opposing counsel, the party in power, and other considerations. There is a breathless deftness required from lawyers, given the volume of litigation and the limited time available. With so many moving parts, questions that are not vital to the relief sought can be met with impatience. It is not that they lack intrinsic value, but that there is simply no time or need for them right now. It follows that there is no need for anything the other does to be irrelevant; the two roles function best when each maintains an awareness of the other’s world. The best academics and lawyers alike understand that almost no certainty in outcome flows from statutes and judgments, and that there is a difference between what one can theoretically ask for and what one should strategically ask for in a courtroom. Just as most successful lawyers are grounded in unshakeable first principles, influential academics are the ones who reveal how legal positions can be reverse-engineered based on the outcomes one seeks to achieve. A place for bothAt their best, the relationship between academics and lawyers, between theory and practice, is complementary, interdependent and conversational. This kinship is deeply embedded within our Constitution and the evolution of law. Article 124(3)(c) of our constitution provides for the appointment of a distinguished jurist as a judge of the Supreme Court of India. This category was included with the hope that jurists of great eminence would bring a perspective different from that of practitioners. However, no professor has ever been appointed as a judge in India. Other jurisdictions have not shied away from appointing academics to the bench. For instance, Justice Andrew Burrows, Judge of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, was a senior research fellow at Oxford at the time of his appointment. Justice Felix Frankfurter was a professor at Harvard prior to his appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Since it is doubtless that drawing only from practitioners has produced its fair share of questionable judges, flawed judgment writing, and myopic law making, would utilising Article 124(3)(c) be such a bad thing after all? How can we know what kind of judge an academic would make when we have never tried to find out? Additionally, Article 145(3) calls for a bench of five or more when a substantial question of law as to the interpretation of the constitution has arisen. The division between what is and is not a substantial question of law recognises that there are layers to litigation. It recognises that being quick, while crucial when dispensing justice, is not always one of the fundamental qualities of either legal argument or judgment writing. Cases that seek to ask fundamental questions about the structure of society itself – privacy, marriage, citizenship – form a separate category in litigation, one that necessarily relies on an academic attitude of deeper enquiry. Unsurprisingly then, the influence of academic thought on practice is neither rare nor remote. Something as significant as the PIL was solidified in Indian courts by Professor Upendra Baxi; Square Circle Clinic, (formerly Project 39A), has a professor at its helm; and, most recently, research conducted by law school faculty was used in hearings on citizenship in the Supreme Court. Similarly, Samuel D. Warren and Louis Brandeis’ 1890 article titled “Right to Privacy” laid the foundation for the constitutional right to privacy, and Guido Calabresi’s 1970 “The Cost of Accidents: A Legal and Economic Analysis” did the same for tort law. Judgments, too, often quote from texts like J.S. Mill’s On Liberty; philosophers like John Rawls and Thomas Hobbes are no strangers to judicial reasoning either. Perhaps the most significant overlap between academia and litigation is in the role of the judge. Like lawyers, judges must be acutely aware of the facts of a case and the consequences that flow from their decisions. On the other hand, both the act of writing a judgment and not just the freedom but the duty to be objective remind one of an academic’s process, unconstrained by the instructions of others. What they write has the capacity to mould societal thought and to nudge public life in a certain direction. They are free (judges are subject to precedent, which can be moved away from when deemed necessary) – to think, to write, and to opine. Both are in conversation with the past while having their eyes on the present and the future. All learned friendsThe use of the word “academic” to denote irrelevance is familiar across disciplines – music, medicine, archaeology – it is not unique to the law. Yet in this world, evidence of the natural synergy between academia and practice suggests that employing the pejorative sense of “academic” seems to serve as little more than a quick exit from a difficult conversation. There seems to be no need to buy into the narrative of an inherent discord between the academic and the lawyer. One can choose to see the other as an ivory tower dilettante or an unprincipled henchman, but, both would, if they let themselves, find that there is complete potential for mutual respect and admiration. It is often easier to value or admire something that one does not possess. The fact that there are dissimilarities in the lives and minds of academics and lawyers can very well lead one to appreciate the other – precisely by being what one is not and is perhaps not even capable of being. It would also help to have more and varied comrades in the exercise of working within the legal system – the exercise of reckoning with society when it has stopped functioning in the way it was intended and attempting to right a wrong, or better still, to understand how the wrong may be avoided in the future. When this is one’s job, one’s bread and butter, one’s calling, more friends (learned or otherwise) can only be welcome. The relationship between legal scholarship and legal practice is an old and symbiotic one. The two are interwoven. All of us – academics, lawyers, and judges – owe debts of gratitude to one another. Let us acknowledge them. Let us celebrate them. Then any disjunction between them? Purely academic.Sumedha Ray Sarkar and Katyayani Suhrud are lawyers practicing in the Supreme Court of India.