Office of the Dean

Message From The Dean

At Jigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law, we believe that law is more than a profession and a system of rules. Law is a discipline of responsibility. It shapes institutions, protects human dignity, resolves conflict, and helps societies imagine what justice requires. Legal education must therefore prepare students not only to practise law, but to think wisely, act ethically, serve compassionately, and help build a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world.

JSW Law was envisioned by His Majesty The King as Bhutan’s first law school and as a vital institution for strengthening justice, the rule of law, democratic governance, and national service. Founded by Royal Charter in 2015, the Law School was created to nurture generations of lawyers and leaders who are intellectually rigorous, professionally competent, ethically grounded, and deeply committed to serving the people and the country.

The Law School is named in honour of His Majesty the Great Fourth King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, whose philosophy of Gross National Happiness continues to inspire Bhutan’s understanding of development, governance, justice, peace, and human flourishing. His Majesty’s name reminds us that law must serve a larger moral purpose: to strengthen institutions while protecting dignity, to advance progress while safeguarding culture and nature, and to build a society where justice is principled, compassionate, and humane.

JSW Law was designed and brought to life with extraordinary care under the visionary leadership of our Founding Honourable President, Her Royal Highness Princess Sonam Dechan Wangchuck. From its values, curriculum, academic culture, campus, partnerships, and institutional character, the School has been carefully nurtured as a community where service, integrity, discipline, compassion, and wisdom are cultivated.

Guided by this Royal vision and strengthened by the careful foundations laid under the leadership of Her Royal Highness the Founding Honourable President, JSW Law understands its purpose as both deeply Bhutanese and meaningfully global. We believe that a law school rooted in Bhutan’s values can offer important insights to the world: about justice with compassion, development with dignity, institutions with integrity, and law in service of human flourishing.

Our work is guided by Justice, Service, and Wisdom. These values shape how we teach, learn, conduct research, and engage with society. We want our students to master legal doctrine, reasoning, research, writing, advocacy, negotiation, and professional skills. But we also want them to understand that the best lawyers are not only technically competent. They are attentive to people, aware of consequences, steady in judgment, and grounded in ethics.

We seek to educate future lawyers and leaders who are dependable. A dependable lawyer is one whose knowledge and wisdom can be trusted, whose judgment is steady, whose ethics are firm, and whose service is guided by responsibility rather than self-interest. In courts, public institutions, private practice, communities, businesses, and international spaces, the world needs legal professionals who can be relied upon in moments of uncertainty, pressure, and change.

This is why we must look at legal education differently. We must not educate lawyers only for courts, offices, and transactions. We must educate them for communities, institutions, the environment, technology, public leadership, regional cooperation, and global responsibility. We must prepare them not only to argue, but also to listen, reconcile, repair, design, reform, and serve. The law school of the future must join legal knowledge with moral imagination, professional excellence, compassion, and public purpose.

Mindfulness and law form an important part of this vision. For us, mindfulness is not simply a wellness activity. It is a way of cultivating attention, self-awareness, restraint, compassion, and wise judgment. Law often operates in moments of conflict, fear, loss, anger, uncertainty, and competing truths. A lawyer’s mind must therefore be sharp, but also calm; critical, but also compassionate; courageous, but also disciplined. Drawing from Bhutanese values, Buddhist wisdom, Gross National Happiness, and global developments in contemplative legal education, JSW Law can help shape a model of legal education that cares not only about what lawyers know, but also about how lawyers think, decide, and serve.

Our scholarship must also be distinctive. We do not seek merely to reproduce legal ideas developed elsewhere. We seek to contribute from our own context to global conversations on justice, constitutionalism, climate change, environmental protection, technology, dispute resolution, restorative justice, sustainability, wellbeing, small-state leadership, and the relationship between law and human flourishing. Our research must be rigorous, comparative, interdisciplinary, policy-relevant, rooted in Bhutanese experience, and open to the world.

Through our curriculum, clinics, law centres, public lectures, journals, conferences, professional training programmes, and partnerships, we build a community that connects learning with service. Our students engage with faculty, judges, lawyers, policymakers, scholars, alumni, and communities. They learn that law is not confined to books, statutes, and judgments. Law lives in institutions, families, businesses, villages, rivers, forests, negotiations, public decisions, and the quiet dignity of people seeking fairness.

Our progress has been possible because JSW Law has never walked alone. The support of our partners, donors, alumni, visiting scholars, legal practitioners, public institutions, and friends has helped us build capacity, widen opportunities for students, strengthen professional training, advance research, and connect Bhutan’s first law school with the wider world. Their trust reminds us that building a law school is not only an institutional project. It is a shared commitment to the future of justice.

The next phase of our journey will require deeper partnership. To support scholarships, strengthen faculty development, expand clinics, build research centres, develop modern infrastructure, promote innovation in legal education, and respond to new challenges in climate change, technology, governance, dispute resolution, business, and social justice, we invite our partners and friends to walk with us in this mission.

Our aspiration is to build a law school that serves Bhutan and speaks to the world. We want JSW Law to be a place where Bhutanese values meet global legal thought, where scholarship serves life, where professional training is joined with ethical formation, and where young lawyers learn that justice must be principled and compassionate. Together, we can educate future lawyers and leaders who are dependable in character, courageous in justice, humble in service, wise in judgment, and committed to a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world.

Dr. Nima Dorji
Dean

Dr. Nima Dorji is the Dean of the Jigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law (JSW Law), Bhutan’s first law school. Prior to his appointment as Dean, he served as Vice Dean and Associate Professor at JSW Law, where he played a key role in advancing the School’s academic programmes, research initiatives, and institutional development.

Dr. Nima Dorji is one of the founding faculty members of JSW Law and has been closely involved in the School’s growth since its establishment. Before joining JSW Law, he served as a Legal Officer at the Bhutan National Legal Institute (BNLI), Bhutan’s Judicial Academy, and was among the founding staff members of the institute.

He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Law from the University of Victoria, Canada, a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the University of Canberra, Australia, a Bachelor of Law and Arts (B.A., LL.B.) from NALSAR University of Law, India, and a Postgraduate Diploma in National Law (PGDNL) from the Royal Institute of Management, Bhutan.

His research examines the intersection of law and happiness, with particular focus on the relationship between happiness and constitutionalism. His broader academic interests include constitutional law, legal theory, governance, Gross National Happiness, and the Rule of Law.

Dr. Nima Dorji was a founding editorial member of the Bhutan Law Review, Bhutan’s first law journal, and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Gross National Happiness and Law, published under the JSW Law Publishing Series.

As a scholar, educator, and institutional leader, Dr. Nima Dorji has contributed significantly to the development of legal education, research, and scholarship in Bhutan, and continues to advance JSW Law’s mission of promoting Justice, Service, and Wisdom.