Opening Message
Philippine Law Journal Ceremonies
2010
Distinguished guests, fellow alumni especially those belonging to the prestigious class of 1974, colleagues in the faculty, fellow students of law:
I regret that I cannot be with you physically today. As this is being read, I would be in Abelardo Hall listening to my 7 year old daughter’s piano recital which was moved today. Conflicted about being in two places at once, I thought that it would be easier for my law colleagues to understand than my 7 year old daughter if I was not around. After all, she did spend most of the last six months perfecting two simple piano pieces.
But, regardless of my physical presence, the current editors of the Philippine Law Journal know the stance of this College and its current leadership in relation to their work. We are giving them our full and unconditional support. A few weeks after they assumed the mantle of leadership of this prestigious journal, we have engaged a substantial part of our administrative staff to recover the soft copies of all the journal articles ever written in order to realize the PLJ’s presence in the internet. I have given them an internal deadline of December of this year. Hopefully, by January, the full texts of several volumes of the PLJ would be available and downloadable through a link with the UP College of Law’s home pages.
Also supportive of faculty scholarship, this administration has increased the support that we give to the scholarly work of many of our faculty members. As I briefed the PLJ editor in chief when she first learned of her new post, she could expect that many of our faculty members would be wanting to publish in the Philippine Law Journal. Also, during the past three years, we have maintained our subscription to Westlaw and added JSTOR to the access that we have in the library. Literally, you can access the scholarship spanning the entire planet and traversing various disciplines with your fingertips.
I also of course told your editor in chief that she would have to compete with a faculty edited interdisciplinary journal known as the Philippine Law and Society Review. Prof. Florin Hilbay is the editor in chief and its Board of Editors are composed of prominent legal luminaries and known personalities from other disciplines. They will publish biannually.
Parenthetically, I am now working on the contracts of more than sixty textbook projects which is part of our Centennial offering. Some of them are treatises on a field of law; many are notes and cases that will certainly aid the teaching of the law and indirectly improve the quality of legal scholarship in this country.
Also, and I hope this will come soon enough, we are hoping to finally revive the Philippine Journal of International Law. This journal will be edited by known academics and practitioners in international law. It is time that we had a forum where various scholars can published, be refereed by their peers, and take positions on various issues in international law suggesting positions that can auger well for Philippine foreign policy.
Where the Philippine Law Journal situates itself in all these will therefore be a challenge. Looking at the various articles that it has published the past four volumes, I think that it can hold its own. Our various societies will definitely be served by more legal scholarship rather than less.
In today’s occasion however, I wish to leave just two bits of advice for the incoming editorial board.
First, maintain and jealously guard intellectual integrity. That is, that we should maintain a high degree of intellectual honesty amongst ourselves. This is so even in the light of how many of the legal institutions that produce legal knowledge do not do so. This is also in the light of the pressure that can be brought to bear on a scholar by the fact that we now have instantaneous access to a huge amount of scholarship. You will feel that it will seem difficult for you to maintain an original idea or unique thread of argument. But, I am confident that you will join in the various conversations about the law found written in these publications. UP College of Law is known for both honor and excellence.
Second, I hope that you will keep in mind the various issues that are confronting our country. Of course as a law journal, the range of your vista should not be the immediate and only the dramatizations produced daily and disguised as news in our newspapers and television. What I challenge you to do is to find the authors and the works that could help us find anchor as we meet the millenarian problems that are manifest in today’s lives. Multiculturalism, climate change, sea changes in the ways we think about our economies, the problems and challenges of globalization, bioethical issues, and many others. Law should provide the framework that embeds the various ways that we keep and hold the important conversations that would allow for a democratic and deliberative solutions to come out. It is not yet so. And it is the duty of legal scholars to know why this is so and what can be done about it.
I wish you the best this year. Working with the PLJ will indeed be one of the more memorable and rewarding experiences that you could have. Even as I listen to the simple piano notes that will be struck by my daughter; please know that I will forever be anxious that you will succeed and exceed our already high expectations.
Congratulations and all the best.
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