Humboldt – NLSIU Exchange Programme | In Conversation with Dillon Davis

Dillon Davis is a final year student at the Humboldt University’s School of Law in Berlin, Germany, where he has been working as a student assistant at the Chair for Public and Comparative Law for the past two years.

Dillon was a part of the exchange visit from Humboldt University to NLSIU in March 2024. The exchange visit falls under the purview of the collaborative project titled ‘Law and Transformation: Opening Conversations between India and Germany.’ The project touches upon multiple legal themes including constitutional and administrative law, intellectual property rights, economic laws, among others.

NLSIU has embarked on a three-year collaboration with the Chair for Comparative and Public Law, Humboldt University, Berlin, under the Indo-German Partnership in Higher Education (IGP) programme of the University Grants Commission, in collaboration with DAAD. Founded in 1925, the German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) is the German support organisation in the field of international academic cooperation.

During his second visit to NLSIU, Dillon shared his thoughts, on the exchange visit, key takeaways, and significant learning experiences.

What got you interested in this exchange programme?

Since my main academic interests are in Comparative Constitutional Law and Comparative-Historical Sociology and we’ve had a number of researchers from NLS visit the Chair throughout this time, coming here as an exchange student seemed like a good idea to begin with. But it was the visits of Dr. Aparna Chandra and Prof. Arun Thiruvengadam in particular that motivated me to apply for the programme.

Could you share some significant learning experiences or key takeaways from this exchange?

The exchange programme has been incredibly gratifying so far since I’ve been able to reconnect with a lot of people who I already knew from their visits to Berlin. But it was also very enjoyable to get to know a lot of younger, newer faculty. One of my most significant takeaways will be the extensive references to other legal systems in my various lectures (particularly Constitutional Law II) and how many professors and students engaged critically with those references.

How would you compare the learning culture, campus atmosphere and academic rigour at Humboldt and NLSIU?

Humboldt and NLSIU are definitely similar when it comes to workload, but significantly diverge in their approaches to that workload. While you have pretty much complete autonomy in how you study for exams and whether or not to attend lectures, there is a minimum attendance requirement/criteria at NLS. Obviously, both approaches have their positive and negative sides. The learning culture at Humboldt allows you more freedom in terms of how you structure your semester, but is “lonelier” at the same time – if that makes sense. The learning culture at NLS is much more institutionalised and students seem to form a cohort more naturally, but that also means that you are much more dependent on the quality of your respective professors’ lectures, and have less time to further develop personal academic interests.

During these two months of stay, what are the different activities or interests have you all explored on and off-campus.

A lot of us attempted to travel as much as possible over the weekends and various holidays. Some of the others also explored sports like volleyball or basketball but I’ve primarily gone to public academic events or film events. I particularly enjoyed visiting the Nilgiris because of the moderate climate and beautiful tea hills and, more generally, all of the little pockets of peace and quiet in the city – the Bangalore Film Forum, Cubbon Park, the National Gallery of Modern Art and above all Champaca Bookstore. On campus, my favourite place will always be the Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism (QAMRA), but maybe that’s just because I’m a sucker for archives.

How long was your visit this time?

This was my second visit to NLS. I visited NLS last year for the Young Scholars’ Workshop that took place over 3 or 4 days. This time, I got to spend two months on campus from March 2nd to April 25th. Some of my fellow students came to campus at the end of February, 2024, as well.

What were your reasons/motivations behind participating in this exchange visit?

We found out that the semester break in Germany lines up almost perfectly with the trimester here at NLS. Our winter semester ends by mid-February and we are free by March which is when the final trimester at NLS begins. This exchange at a very basic level provides German students with an idea of how legal education works in India, and how the legal culture works in this country. Of course, this does not mean that I start becoming an expert in constitutional law. We do acknowledge that every single legal system has enormously complex contexts, including all the Indian historical references, or all of the cultural references which we may not fully understand. The other point is that German legal education is unfortunately very German centric in a way. You might be able to attend a course on United States constitutional law. But really the main aspect and the main focus of studies will always be German constitutional law, German administrative law, German private law and so on.