Nkumba University School of Law (SLAW) was started by the late Professor Joseph M.N Kakooza in the year 2005. It is fully accredited by the National Council of Higher Education (NCHE) in 2016 and the Law Council in 2007. The School started when a number of Law Schools were mushrooming in the country. At that time many academicians and, indeed, the legal fraternally questioned the wisdom of starting such new Schools as ours since, according to them, Makerere University could solely cater for training of lawyers in the country. Such question has always arisen in all disciplines of knowledge and education when new institutions are started. Of course, educators have always addressed and still continue to address their attention to it the world over.
The kind of law graduate Nkumba Law School has hitherto produced, and is still bent on producing, is one who adheres to the Nkumba University motto of “I OWE YOU”. Like the early Roman lawyer, who would put service to his entire client and society at large first, rather than being merely a money spinner, the School’s law graduates are trained to answer the needs of its immediate environment, i.e. his/her country, the East African Region with the revived and expanding co-operation, aims at producing law graduates capable of meeting the demands of the global village, with all the growing international commercial activities and the issues obtaining in international law and order.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes did, in his address on the topic Path of the Law, at Harvard University Law School, in 1897, say:
For the rational study of the law, the black letter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future, is the man of statistics and the master of economics.
His prediction is already a reality today. Legal education must cater for this kind of product. Nkumba University School of Law did, in designing the LL.B Syllabus, basing on specific courses and tutorials, bearing in mind the awareness of the intentional dimensions of law and the above reality. The technological developments demand computer use in research; and so courses such as international criminal justice are intended to produce a graduate with a wider outlook and capacity.
The School has also successfully taken part in international Inter- University Moot Competitions. There is also a steady increase in the number of our graduates who qualify for admission to the prestigious and highly competitive Post-Graduate Bar Course at the Law Development Centre (LDC), Makerere Hill Road, Kampala, the Nairobi School of Law in Kenya and the Institute of Legal Practice and Development (ILPD) in Kigali Rwanda. It does not end at this, but a quick survey by anyone interested will reveal that a commendable number of alumni are widely placed in private legal practice at the Bar, in the judiciary, in the armed forces, in the Legislature and in public services generally.
The School’s Institute of Criminal Justice (ICJ) offers a Bachelor of Criminal Justice Degree and a Diploma. These two courses are designed to train the much needed human resource in the country’s criminal justice system with a lot of challenges. The courses offered in the Institute are a timely intervention for the human resource needs of the bodies mentioned above.
It should be noted that proliferation of institutions of higher learning offering legal education in this country has of course, brought with it ethical challenges that the legal profession has to contend with. The School is determined to produce graduates who do not simply regard the law as a piece of “social engineering” designed to keep the community in good order and their accounts credited regardless of issues of integrity. The School seeks to produce professionals who are skilled in the profession and who being ethical, are assets to themselves and to the public that seeks legal services from them. In this regard the Legal Ethics subject is compulsory at the School. We hope that you will choose to study at this School. We look forward to welcoming you into our ever evolving community of legal scholars.
