UP Law Dean 2008/2011

Message to the Centennial Graduating Batch of the UP College of Law
April 18, 2011

Now it is your turn.

Like ninety seven (97) other classes in our one hundred years of existence, you are now the celebrants in a ritual that marks your rite of passage. Henceforth you carry the academic title Juris Doctor and the burden of being an alumnus of the College of Law of the University of the Philippines. You are now the incarnation of all the youthful hopes and aspirations of all of those who had started in the legal profession. Like many, you will look back to these rituals to measure what it is that you have achieved or simply to remind yourselves of what you cherish as your values. In this noble profession, remember that our currency is our honor and excellence, our leadership and service and our abiding passion to do justice.

While you may have many things in common with earlier classes, you too stand unique among all those that graduated from the UP College of Law.

Yours is a generation that was introduced to law in a different medium.

I graduated in 1987 getting introduced to the PC-XT which we used as a substitute to the typewriter. Many of those before me (like the faculty behind me) only knew of the typewriter, the onioned skin paper and the carbon copy.

Your generation can work on the many apps in an iPad. Your 3g or wifi enabled smartphones and lithium batteries allow you to breach the physical limitations of an AC plugged computer terminal. You reach out to friends in facebook, converse with communities through twitter and initially expand knowledge with wikipedia and other similar tools on the internet. You engage not only with your friends who you can have coffee with, but virtual friends of any culture or nationality. (At times, you have friends who are not really your friends.)

Very few of you may have seen a personal letter delivered through post office services with its emotions mellowed by the natural delays as its paper is transferred from one human hand to another. (And the registered mail you received as an OLA intern does not count either.) To you, email is the standard. This is where you send messages, pictures, videos, links to pages in the internet. This is where you could engage while being comfortably anonymous. This digital world truly creates more difficult layers in our present conception of what is personal.

All of you have the capability to shape the opinions of your communities seated behind a desk broadcasting through your personal blogs. Your generation lives in an age where access to tremendous information and opinion is possible. Ironically, without effort on your part, too much information can freeze you into inaction; too much opinion can lead to your desentization.

But this is not all.

The problems that we will confront in the next few years has also expanded exponentially. For instance in such vital commodity as water an author has warned:

“In the last four decades of the twentieth century, the amount of freshwater available for each human being worldwide shrank by almost two thirds. It is expected to be halved again by 2025”.

Joachim von Braun and his colleagues at the International Food Policy Research Institute predicts:

“...insufficient attention to water-related investments and policies could produce a water crises that would in turn lead to food system stress, given competing demands on scarce water. With increased water stress, relative crop yields decline, representing an annual loss in crop yields forgone...In such a water crises scenario, cereal production declines by ten percent, a loss equivalent to the entire Indian cereal crop. These declines would cause rice prices to rise by 40 percent, wheat prices by 80 percent, and maize prices by 120 percent by the year 2025. Price increases of this magnitude will dampen demand, contract trade, and hit poor people the hardest, especially the one billion people who live in urban slums and the many millions of rural poor people who are net purchasers.”

By the way, in case you feel disconnected, in 2025, many of you will only be nearing your forties. If our current demographics are correct, you may only be starting a family at that time. Then your priorities will change.

Food prices are increasing and with it the specter of hunger and shortage. With hunger and shortages come wars that destabilize countries and regions. With war and famine come refugees that alter the demographics of entire continents. The increase in food prices may be the result of population increases, changes in trade patterns, too much biofuel production, urbanization, dietary changes, climate change, regional droughts, speculation on commodity prices, increase in the price of oil.

The changing character of what and how we eat which has direct impact on our collective health. It is now cheaper to buy processed hamburger with a pack of cigarettes than the lowly but healthier vegetables in our market. In many rural areas that I have visited in our country, carbonated soft drinks is often cheaper and more ubiquitous than clean bottled mineral water.

Oil is slowly becoming a scarce commodity. Experts suspect that we have surpassed peak oil. It is becoming more expensive to find new and abundant sources of this product. Thus oil prices have become more vulnerable, more volatile. In your last year in the College of Law, the world became witness to another environmental disaster caused by an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico (evidence that humanity is now trying to recover oil from the most inaccessible places). Political restiveness mark the social landscape in countries that produce much of the world’s oil.

If you have not noticed, the price of unleaded gas is now Php 56 pesos. In Baler Quezon and in Maguindanao, both of which I visited just days ago, some gasoline stations were selling a liter of unleaded gas at a little more than 60 pesos. If you have time, I invite you to check on the latest increases in your electric utility billing. Better still, revisit the statistics and the progress for alternative fuel sources. It is an unjust world where there is hunger amid plenty; affluence with insecurity. It is an unjust world where our social and cultural infrastructure cannot harness human creativity to pull us from the brink of total extinction

The challenge that we--as a profession--have to confront is whether our legal infrastructure can accommodate solutions rather than retard them. More specifically, do we as a law school reinforce, recreate, and reproduce thinking of laws that exacerbate these problems? In this Republic, are we training more law students--future leaders--so that our law schools can have better statistics licensure examination that may have very little to do with what legal practice requires today? Or are we able to inculcate a healthy irreverence to legal artifact and canonical thought to nurture the critical abilities of our students so that they can immediately contribute to rethinking the frames and paradigms that have brought our societies hunger amid plenty, affluence with insecurity? Do we--as lawyers produced by this national legal institution--know the law so well that we are able to actually find ways to assist in its subtle or radical transformation?

Do we really have the courage to lead?

I know that this is a tall order. After all, you have just graduated. But I do believe that you have encountered many of the values that will make you part of the solution. Let me briefly rehearse some of them again.

You can only see the bigger and more fundamental problem if you know how to look for it. Only then, will you start to see the lasting solutions. To do this, you have to gain full knowledge and understanding of what is before you but resist the comfortable inertia that the status quo offers. Even in your comfort, you have to continue to ask the more difficult questions. You could say that the danger to any UP law graduate is that in their successes they forget to be relevant.

For example, lawyers that practice proficiently in the commercial field have skills that do not only come from experience, but also from knowledge and understanding. The status quo offers them more clients who can occupy their time. They will become affluent and sought after. But many of UP law alumni in this field, for instance those in your faculty, go beyond the comfortable inertia that their discipline offers. They ask deeper questions. They ask about government and governance. Far more than the interests of their clients, they interrogate with our public’s interest in mind. Some even forsake practice and join public service. It is the spirit of UP that haunts them.

By the way, the inertia can also happen in other unlikely fields.

Those who practice proficiently with public interest law do so initially with passion tempered by the knowledge and skills required to work their disciplines. The farmer’s lawyer is familiar with land and agrarian laws. The lawyer with an abiding passion for the environment knows the intricacies of environmental law. But the comfortable inertia sets in when they become accustomed to be at the margins. It is easy to be complacently there when the status quo requests that they perform the romantic but useless paradigm of being the voice in the wilderness. But UP law alumni bucks these trends. They ask the more difficult question of how their concerns can become mainstream. In their effort to do so, they ask their public interest organizations to do more, or even perhaps join more powerful corporations or even enter government themselves. It is also the spirit of UP law that also haunts them.

More important than the stereotypical idea of service is the ability to truly be of service led by our desire to continue to ask the hard questions. To continue to ask the hard questions is to remain critical. Being critical is a mark of the true UP Law Alumni.

Asking the hard questions will lead you to another important quality of a UP law alumni: courage.

In the last year, your faculty has unwittingly shown you what this means. And it has been truly an honor to be its Dean these past three years.

The powerful status quo does not fear all dissent; it only fears the dissent that has the capability to undermine them. This is the dissent that rings true and is reasonable.

No one can stop the consequences of truthful speech or that of a good opinion. Thus, the status quo can only hope to spin it and strike fear on those who utter it or seek to speak some more. Shaming has always been a weapon of those who wield power. It conveniently shifts the public’s attention from the message to the speaker. It is used in the hope that by doing so, the speaker will be put in his place. Rather than speak the truth the speaker is invited to remain in an ignominious dark corner imprisoned by the unreasonable assumption that only those who are inhumanly perfect have the right to comment on the actions of the public status quo.

Courage requires that you take personal risks. Life and law is the same in this regard: it is the risks you take reveal the fighting faiths that you truly believe. A life without risk is not what you signed up for when you entered the portals of the UP College of Law. Learn to deserve to take the risks that life will offer you.

I speak for the faculty when I say that we are proud of what you have become. Continue to live a life truly worth living. Remain critical, ask the difficult questions, find your voice, find your courage, believe in your fighting faiths, resist the comforts of inertia. Stand proud to be an alumnus of the UP College of Law. Celebrate honor and excellence. Value leadership and service. Ever be passionate in your quest for justice.

Thank you and, again, congratulations.

Opening, GPH MILF 20th Exploratory Talks

 

Opening Remarks of the Chair of the GPH Panel

February 9, 2011

 

Esteemed colleagues from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front led by the Chair of its Peace Panel the Honorable Mohagher Iqbal,  Honorable Datuk Othman bin Abdul Razak, members of the International Contact Group, fellow colleagues committed to a just and lasting peace.

 

I bring warm greetings of peace from His Excellency Benigno Simeon Aquino III and his entire cabinet.

 

It is indeed an honor to be where we are right now: at a conjuncture where together we can define how social and historical injustice can be addressed and definitively bring comprehensive and lasting peace in our lands. Any other alternative is less acceptable. All of us present today know that we do not want to waste our collective efforts and bury them in the banality of yet another set of talks that only aspire for peace and nothing else. We come to work with you to bring just peace, not simply aspire for it.

 

We negotiate for just peace because we know that it is possible from where we stand.  We negotiate for peace because we know that we mutually have more serious enemies to face: poverty in an era of potential prosperity, powerlessness in an age where only mutual cooperation can help us hurdle ecological challenges of potentially catastrophic proportions, ignorance in the midst of tremendous intellectual and technological possibilities.

 

For these reasons, and on behalf of our principals we are resuming talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.  To us, this is the twentieth formal exploratory meeting of the parties. We stand by the state of the current agreements with the text qualified by the interpretations made in formal remarks made by chairs of the various government panels.  We also state for the record that the GPH panel is just a change of nomenclature.  GRP and GPH are one and the same.  But this GPH is now under a new administration better enlightened by our evaluation of the past. How this new administration deals with the peace process will be evident as we proceed.  But just so it is clear, we have no intention to derogate past signed agreements.

 

I am honored to be in the company of very competent panel of negotiators. Professor Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, a colleague at the University of the Philippines, is known to you not only through her writings but also in her commitment on issues relevant to our mission.  Former Secretary Senen Bacani has served honorably as part of the cabinet and has also proven himself as both organizer and entrepreneur working with various peoples in Mindanao.  Vice Mayor Ramon Piang is not only Teduray, he is a leader among local government officials in Mindanao.

 

None of us have any national political ambitions.  None of us want to prolong our duties.  All of us want to do simply what is right.  We believe we were chosen by President Aquino precisely because of these and much more.

 

Our panel benefits from advice of an esteemed consultant to our panel, Dr Hamid Barra.  Dr Barra has served with the ARMM, became intimately engaged in its problems.  He is Maranao and a well respected scholar in Islamic Law and Jurisprudence.

 

Johaira Wahab leads our standing legal team.  She is Maguindanao, lived her youth in Cotabato City, and finished her law degree at the University of the Philippines.  She remains involved in many Muslim Women's issues. This legal team includes two lawyers from the Solicitor General's office, Ms Armi Bayot and Mr. Omar Romero apart from their experience at their office. Both share in the distinction of also being graduates of the UP College of Law.  Abdel Disangcopan, also from the UP Law is Maranao and from Iligan. Needless to say, because of my academic position, we have access to the best legal minds that our country can offer.

 

The head of our secretariat is Director Iona Jalijali.  She has worked in the legislature, participated in many public interest campaigns, worked with various formations of civil society while discharging her abilities as an organizer and as a manager.  The secretariat of the GPH panel for this round of talks includes Mr. Wendell Orbeso, Ms Bianca Bacani, Ms Sabrina Poon, Mr. Lloyd Yales and our media consultant, Director Polly Cunanan.

 

We have restructured our staff to also include a senior military adviser who is in active service. Today this is General Aguilar.  We have also brought with us for this round of talks, a critical military officer who heads the secretariat of our CCCH.  His contribution to maintaining the ceasefire need not be emphasized. He knows your ground commanders.  He is also known to them.

 

In this round of talks we have on stand by, a representative from the highest echelon of the armed forces as well as one of our most responsible officers on the ground.  Both answer to our panel.  I report to you that the various officers assigned to the various components of our ceasefire mechanisms and the AHJAG are among the best in their fields. All are respected soldiers.  In this administration and at this time, we speak with one voice with the primacy of the peace process being dominant. 

 

We agree with the Honorable Mohagher Iqbal, writing under his other pseudonym Salah Jubair, that at this table the principal question is: "how do we solve the Bangsamoro problem?"  We may represent principals with other fundamental and principled differences, but we see our role in this table as finding our common ground in practical details inspired by principles. We propose that we be haunted by whether the options we debate here can truly make a present difference for our peoples and provide them with the best opportunities to shape their own future. We do not propose that we do not mention the abstract contextualizations of our proposals, just that we retain a healthy impatience for too much of it.  This healthy impatience should be driven by the urgency of our desire to bring prosperity, justice and ecological sustainability.

 

We know many members of your panel.  We have met on different occasions.  We are indeed privileged to be working with you.  We are also especially pleased because we know that while you will be as resolutely principled as we will be, you will also be open to understand our interpretations and meanings.  We are certain that while you will be as candid as we will be, you will also remain cordial and professional in your dealings.  It is for these reasons that even before our formal resumption of talks we have held all of you in high esteem.  

 

Our instructions include that we learn from our history, general history as well as the history of our negotiations.  Hence, we have been instructed to be inclusive, participative and as far as the ethics of these negotiations will allow, be transparent.  We are to commit that which can be politically deliverable.  We will discharge these responsibilities diligently.

 

As a step towards transparency for our constituents, we submit to you for your consideration and as a proposed agenda for the next formal meeting our draft to articulate the current modalities of our negotiations.  We have worked on the 1999 Agreement on the Rules for the Conduct of Formal Peace Talks to reflect current practices including all its flexibilities.  For next meeting we propose that we consider the creation of a technical working group from our panels so that work on this important procedural agenda item does not detract us from the process leading to substantive agreements.

 

Contrary to some statements, it has never been our intention to use this need to articulate in writing the process of our negotiation as a delaying tactic. We felt that those statements were unfair and taken out of context.  Rather, to us it is an important component of regaining the trust of a significant segment of our constituency in these processes.  Again, I reiterate, we propose a technical working group to work on this and report to the panel so that there will be no delays in our coming to a negotiated settlement at the soonest possible time. The technical working group may consider this draft or perhaps even work on other formulations for so long as they ably reflect mutually agreed upon procedures enlightened by experience. 

 

At this meeting, we will move for the extension of the mandates of the International Monitoring Team and the AHJAG for another year.  One year to us is a reasonable time period within which we may be able to expect to shape fundamental agreements inspired by our past experiences, driven by contemporary needs and hopeful of our future.

 

At this meeting, we will work with you to clarify the situation of the Bangsamoro Leadership and Management Institute and define a way jump start it so that it can become a reality. We will clarify our position on the list of 25 detainees that you submitted to us for our review during the last informal meeting.

 

Most importantly, we will be very open to receive the revised draft of your comprehensive compact as a document that can help us clarify your positions so that we can evaluate our own.  We know that by doing so, we are skipping the last few documents deliberated on the table by the past administration in their effort to find an interim agreement. We are inspired by the common statement in the Declaration of Continuity referring to openness in exploring new modalities to reach substantive agreements.

 

We accept your proposal that we move the period for clarification to the next meeting.  We however intend to offer for discussion our explanation of the parameters of that period for clarification or what is termed as “questions and answers” in the current agenda.  Needless to say, the form and substance of the proposals submitted at this table by the past administration is seriously being reconsidered.  

 

In this meeting, we hope to be able to get a clearer understanding of the situation of Commander Ustadz Ameril Umbra Kato and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).  We bring with us questions from our principals. We are concerned that this development may endanger our ceasefire mechanisms. We hope that the clarifications we receive in this formal meeting can help us allay the serious and legitimate fears of many of those who we now represent.

 

I close these first remarks by saying that meaningful freedoms can only be won with courage.  For this forum courage entails that we can keep our minds and hearts open so that we can shape practical, viable and sustainable options that our principals and constituents can consider that will truly honor the many sufferings that our historical conflict has caused. I hope that all of us share in this ideal.

 

Thank you and good morning.

 

Dean’s Statement
Filing of Compliance
In re: Letter of UP Law Faculty entitled “Restoring Integrity”
A.M. No. 10-10-4 SC
November 19, 2010

Today, we filed a pleading called a “Compliance” for faculty members that were made respondents in the administrative matter entitled In re: Letter of the UP Law Faculty entitled “Restoring Integrity”. Accompanying this Compliance is a Manifestation on behalf of Dr. Owen Lynch, a research fellow and a visiting professor from the United States, and a separate supplemental submission from the Dean of the UP College of Law in response to his separate citations.
We are represented by a number of prominent law firms, lawyers and the Free Legal Assistance Group. They spent a considerable amount of time working with us to come out with a respectful yet principled defense that can be filed at the soonest possible time.
So as not be seen as waiving this possible defense, we have simply reserved the due process rights in our Compliance. These rights were also pointed out in the dissents to the Order requiring us to submit an explanation. What we were served was a full Resolution covered by a Notice of Judgment. The Resolution made findings of fact and law. We were not heard at first instance.
In our Compliance, we emphasized that our statement entitled Restoring Integrity was a fair comment on a published (and still uncorrected) decision of the Supreme Court in Vinuya versus Executive Secretary. The underlying intention in the expression of opinion of the faculty of the UP College of law is in the statement itself. It was and remains “to defend the integrity and credibility of the entire supreme court”, in the light of the perceived plagiarism and misrepresentation that was committed. It was issued in discharge of the solemn duties and trust reposed upon us as teachers in the profession of law and as members of the Bar to speak out on a matter of public concern and one that is of vital interest to us.
Our statement was issued so that the Court could urgently act to correct a wrong so as to inspire confidence in the legal system rather than to lessen it. Various individuals and academic institutions here and abroad had, by then, noticed the failures in attribution and misrepresentations. We still continue to call on the Court to institute ways and means to prevent similar occurrences. We are more than willing to sit down with the Court’s representatives and contribute our academic resources to find ways to lessen its docket as well as to continue to improve court staff’s ability to do research.
Public critique of a published decision is different from disrespect of the Court that makes such a decision. Law professors are the most likely experts within the legal profession to be able to assist the public understand these decisions. They should be expected to be independent and candid in their assessments. Critique will always come with some degree of irreverence. Otherwise those who wish to speak their truths may not be able to address those in power. We teach our students that injustice suffered by those who are powerless deserve their most effective voice. We teach them that that is what ennobles our calling as lawyers.
Timidity within the legal academia may result in a failure of democracy. From the point of view of the traditions of the University of the Philippines, it would have been a betrayal of our role as part of the national university if we failed to speak out on what we perceived as an injustice. We did not wish to betray our role as an academic institution especially on the eve of our centennial as an institution.
We thank all those who have publicly and privately expressed their support for what we stand for. Despite our circumstances, we ask that we all continue to be vigilant. We ask that, with all due respect, we continue to discharge our right to examine and comment on the decisions and procedures of our judiciary. This way we can constructively assist our Supreme Court find creative and lasting solutions to bring about the kind of justice that all our peoples deserve.

Marvic M.V.F. Leonen
Dean and Professor of Law
University of the Philippines
[email protected]
Tel and fax: 9270518

PDF copy of the Order received by your UP Law Professors

A pdf copy of the judgment/resolution/show cause order we received is downloadable here.  Download Show cause order re restoring integrity 2  Apologies that it is a large file.

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.

A Place for Honor

Marvic M.V.F. Leonen
September 3, 2010

“The line of fire is a place of honor.”

I first heard this from Lean Alejandro during one of his perorations on what the youth should do way back during Martial Law days. Then, the student body of the University of the Philippines was attempting to reestablish the University Student Council. The issues then were not solely about the UP but the context in which this academic institution operates. In my younger days, I had imagined that that meant standing in line in mass mobilizations, being found in rural areas deep into mountainous regions in the Philippines or even perhaps dying for one’s country.

Today, I find myself repeating that phrase in a totally different context. Certainly not in the rustic environment of my youthful dreams. I am Dean of the law school of the University of the Philippines where majority of the faculty and students came out with a statement asking a justice of the Supreme Court to resign for having written a decision with plagiarized and misleading contents. The decision concerns “comfort women” raped and used by the Japanese army during the second world war asking for reliefs from the Supreme Court. The theory of this case was developed by law students years ago with the support and encouragement by a UP law professor. Later, that same theory became dominant in international law academic circles. The case was then filed. It definitely presented an intellectual challenge to the court, not to mention giving it an opportunity to creatively read doctrine to serve values which we should, as a state, hold dear.

I have been advised by some that what we did may be construed as an indirect contempt of the Supreme Court. I hope that it is not seen in that way not for our sake but for the sake of something greater than the incumbents of the court or those in our faculty.

Since the publication of the decision, three known international authors, all from legal academia, wrote the Supreme Court. One of them attached a matrix in his two page letter showing clearly that entries in his book was lifted verbatim. He also asked the Supreme Court for an explanation why the conclusions that decision arrived at was different from that he argued for in his book. It matters to me that this book was published in Europe with a reputable academic publishing group. It is almost as if we are suffering from embarrassment in the international arena without us knowing because our newspapers and television channels do not seem to report on it anymore.

Standing up to the Philippine Supreme Court even as lawyers is not an easy thing to do. The most obvious limitation is that lawyers vicariously argue cases which are not really theirs. Many lawyers understandably would not risk losing a majority vote simply because it had spoken out of turn on matters that may not be directly related to cases which they bring to the court. It is normally a choice between risking getting the ire of some of the members of the court for an argument you have to make in a case and risking getting the same ire for a matter which has a more far reaching effect, i.e. a mistake or an impropriety done by a member of the court.

That is where I think the legal academia should come in.

Teaching the law as seen through various jurisprudence and other related literature puts us in a unique situation to be able to assess doctrine for what they are. Daily, we engage in critical irreverence simply so that our students develop the appetite to evaluate and rethink even the most canonical of beliefs. Doing so, we train them not to be glorified puppets of the perceived status quo but social leaders who are aware of the value and threat of institutions. You could say, that our work as law professors entail that we commit contempt daily in our classrooms.

To provide decent critique, our tools are not only the materials we read but also the network provided by our professional and academic engagements. We go to academic conferences: some bland, others esoteric, even those which are truly erudite. We write for foreign law journals and correspond with our peers in other jurisdictions. The conversations we have range from the very mundane to the seemingly profound elements of postcolonial praxis, semiotics, metaphysics that relate to our passion for the law. In a sense we are able to inhabit a part of the legal profession--that of the academia--that not many practicing lawyers may want to inhabit. But we see it as essential. How else would we be able to find out the nuances of the idea of jus cogens and how it has already been deployed elsewhere?

But, should decent critique be limited to our classrooms?

Decisions of our Supreme Court are accessible to the public. All you have to do is to click on the Philippine Supreme Court’s web page. Whether it is a simple read is another matter. Academics can help in guiding the public as to how each decision squares with existing precedents, or its relationship to the world of emerging approaches to interpretation in law. In doing so we can lead or mislead. The possibility that we may mislead is always there: for we are humans trying to make sense of this world. Humans, participating with our craft and modes of thinking, in what we know to be a democracy--one where the value of expression, free expression, is cherished.

You could say, that academics should be public intellectuals. Perhaps, they should be able to shape public opinion much more than some columnists in daily broadsheets.

The faculty of UP Law is different from other law schools. We have a core of regular faculty members whose principal job is to teach, do research and provide extension work. The value of this core faculty is that being sufficiently immune from having to participate in the pragmatic concerns of cases wading through our court system it can then responsibly discharge its duty to comment on the Supreme Court’s decisions for its students, other members of the faculty, other members of legal academia and the public in general. We do also have a substantial number of professorial lecturers, some of the best from the ranks of the practicing legal profession. Their presence balances the interests of those who wish to see legal developments from a broad perspective to those who see it from a professional point of view.

Our faculty’s consensus was that regardless of standpoint however, plagiarism and misrepresenting the conclusion in the works of others, should be denounced. We saw it clearly in Vinuya v Executive Secretary.

Others say that we are creating a crises in our court system. We see it as a crises already being there and coming to the aid of kindred spirits that want to restore integrity in our courts. Assessing the possible scenarios, we thought it best to request the concerned justice to own up to the mistake and spare the Supreme Court the agony of having to make a decision.

Consider these questions that can arise out of a decision that is plagiarized:

Who writes decisions for the justices of the Supreme Court? When others do research for them, are they expected to be familiar with the same literature that the researchers have read? Don’t we vet the candidates for the Supreme Court through a laborious process? Should we vet their researchers in a similar manner? How powerful are researchers in offices of justices of the court?

Or, do the canons of judicial responsibility also apply to researchers of justices in our court?

Whose thinking must a law practitioner try to discern when pursuing her/his case? Should s/he really be reading the decisions of the justices of the court? Or should their time be better placed in reading the writings of the researchers that they hire? If so, is there a listing of who the researchers are in each of the offices of all the justices of the Supreme Court.

When a Supreme Court justice signs a decision, can we be assured that the words and the argument are hers/his?

What do we tell a brilliant law student that comes across a Supreme Court decision where portions of two published legal articles and a textbook are lifted without proper citations? Can we then enforce our rules on intellectual dishonesty on our law students? Can any law school advise its students on the importance of intellectual honesty and integrity?

What leadership should we be entitled to expect from the Supreme Court?

Should a court expect academics to simply praise them and refrain from criticism? If that were so, then on what is its accountability based on? Do they see their methods and reasoning as so infallible? Do they honestly believe that undeserved praises from their audience have a better chance of ensuring judicial independence than harsh but well reasoned out critique?

Citing anyone for contempt defines what to a court is legitimate or illegitimate criticism. It is an attempt to ostracize those who have spoken out because it signals to the legal profession what is speech that is not accepted by that court.

We are certainly in that line of fire. We would not have been had we chosen to keep silent. We could have remained silent and spoke of the breach in intellectual honesty in hushed conversations. That is not our idea of a democracy where free speech is enshrined. And had we silenced and censored ourselves, we would not have created a place of honor that our justices may courageously take.

The “C” Word

I teach Constitutional Law. I do so with civic and critical irreverence. I feel that that attitude is essential in order to equip students to see constitutional provisions not merely as limiting frame but more to understand what the text and doctrinal interpretations really say and therefore to realize the possibilities given cases and social issues that they will inevitably encounter. In my view, an unthinking unhistorical admonition that the constitution is so sacred that the possibilities of what it can be cannot be discussed in public does more to weaken the social fabric of the state and the societies that it is supposed to protect. Constitution is a word that political actors should not avoid. Instead, discussions about it should be embraced.

In my classes, I train students to see the words, phrases, sentences and structural contexts of the provisions in the Constitution. I train them the way that I expect justices--of various skill levels--would see it. After all, with indulgence to the Bee Gees, “words are all we have” as lawyers.

Thus, an ordinary reading of the fourth paragraph of article XII, section 2 paragraph 4 of the Constitution might miss the tiny “or” in between “financial” and “technical”. But with cases such as La Bugal B’laan Tribal Association et al v Western Mining Corporation, this two letter word becomes the textual forum to determine control of trillions of pesos worth of minerals, lives of countless indigenous peoples and farming communities, and complex theories of “reading” and “interpretation”. These discussions set the stage for the well rehearsed but fundamental and ubiquitous questions of law and legitimacy, law and expectations, law and culture, law and economics.

There are countless other words in eighteen articles with a total of three hundred and one numbered provisions. Thus, “...founded on the right of farmers and regular farmworkers, who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till...” in article XIV, section 4 adds volumes into discussions about agrarian reform in Hacienda Luisita. The word “Congress” (yes with a capital C) in article XVII (amendments and revision) opens dimensions of ambiguity that can be deployed to cause or settle political conflict. And this possibility for ambiguity is present no matter what the constitution, for so long as words are words, words are words in context, words are used to signify and words are used for various purposes.

Constitutions, like all law, are crafted by human beings working through the politics of various forums legitimized by social realities. Constitutions, and the political necessities that they spawn, are therefore imperfect. This does not mean that lawyers should not--and cannot--use its provisions. Understanding the constitution with sufficient irreverence to arrive a more critical way of deploying it does not easily translate to an advocacy to violate its provisions. It invites discussion. And discussion can only lead to genuine participation in the body politic--especially by those who have not had a say in the formulation of law or even perhaps in the crafting of a constitution. Those who others better placed in the status quo would call as “rank amateurs”.

Of course, we could always start with the “constitution as a social contract”, and then silence those who do not find that metaphor as intellectual satisfying nor truly politically descriptive. Or that the “constitution is a manifestation of the sovereign will” and therefore reduce our critical abilities to the instinctual awe provoked by the holiness of the word “sovereign”. There is a temptation to call anyone who even discusses constitutional change in the agenda as automatically committing “treason.” I know that these metaphors have been deployed--even jurisprudentially. I sense that in the absence of reason, omnipotent metaphor that have become cliche fills in the vacuum. Authority--qua authority--is the normal refuge of those who fear authentic discussion. And normally, this again come from people who benefit the most from the status quo.

At the University of the Philippines, I have often heard that to be critical is in itself liberating political practice. I would not go that far. I would qualify it by saying that it depends on the cogency of the argument, the standpoint from which it is argued and the way the points are made. But, I am sure that conversations tend to be more egalitarian when there is more tolerance for the irreverent.

I think that from time to time, our political discussions in media should be infected by these discussions. I would think that this should be most welcome even if they do not scream headlines, nor stereotype people, nor sell newspapers.

Let Us Make Peace

Statement of Dean Marvic M.V.F. Leonen
Chair, GRP Panel in Talks with the MILF

National Solidarity Conference for Mindanao
August 13, 2010, UP Hotel
Quezon City

Thank you for inviting me and providing the space to be able to address the topic that has been assigned to me and other issues in relation to the current peace talks.

It is always a relief to be among friends who share a passion for the same kind of peace. I expect that you will always be candid. That without any prodding, you will give feedback or share suggestions. I have no doubt that all this will be given with a lot of sincerity and urgency and always within a keen sense of history and context. That is why I have continued to respect your efforts.

Years ago, the challenge for both negotiating parties to consider, was stated simply by the MILF as: how to solve the Bangsamoro problem. This still is the most important question to address. We are however more fortunate than past negotiating panels in several respects.

There have already been significant steps taken, not only in the understanding of what inspires this question, but also in terms of clarifying the question further into more specific queries that the parties must address. Further, we have had significant political experience--on both sides--to draw up the kinds of solutions necessary to address this problem.

My direct principal, the incumbent President of the Republic of the Philippines--unlike his predecessor--now enjoys an overwhelmingly fresh mandate from the Filipino people. He was swept into power by citizens who not only wants him to redress the wrongdoings of the past, but also to learn from why these happened. In a speech delivered on April 22, 2010 at the Peace and Security Forum at the Mandarin Hotel, the President acknowledged that the lack of peace in Mindanao is the result of a “deeper systemic problem”. This was exacerbated by the former administration that “merely paid lip service to the quest for true peace, security and progress.” In his words:

“For close to a decade, the present administration has wasted opportunities to resolve our internal conflicts and move this nation forward. Instead it exploited the conditions spawned by the internecine conflict for political gain. It chose to coddle warlords willing to deliver command votes come election time rather than arrest them and implement the law.

“The rejection of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) has taught valuable but costly lessons to the advocates of peace.

“(a) The absence of a clear national policy and coherent strategy for peace negotiators led to confusion and false expectations across the table.

“(b) The negotiations were done secretly and without involving the views of key stakeholders whose futures depend on the ‘promise of Mindanao’

“(c) Moreover, negotiations were done in haste to meet deadlines set to gain ‘brownie points’ from an expectant international community.

“(d) The result was a patchwork of provisions in a document that caused greater division than unity.”

Thus, his policy statement that:

“We must revive the peace process on the basis of a comprehensive understanding of the root causes of the conflict, under clear policies that pave the way ahead, and driven by a genuine desire to attain a just and lasting peace.”

“We shall endeavor to restore confidence in the peace process that is transparent and participative, and renew our faith in our shared vision of a peaceful, secure and prosperous future under one sovereign flag.”

The most significant points made by the President should be underscored.

First, the peace process should happen “on the basis of a comprehensive understanding of the root causes of the conflict,”

Second, that it should be conducted under “clear policies that pave the way ahead, and driven by a genuine desire to attain a just and lasting peace.”

Third, that there should be a restoration of “confidence in the peace process that is transparent and participative”, and

Fourth, that we envision a “peaceful, secure and prosperous future under one sovereign flag.”

Fears have been recently expressed on three things: that we will be insisting that we (1) start from scratch; (2) localize the talks; and (3) replace the current facilitator of the talks. They say that these will “delay or even imperil the peace talks.”

We do not intend to start from scratch.

To even imply that we have even considered this possibility is to underestimate the political sense and historical understanding of the negotiators that have already been named and of this entire administration. Our marching orders are to move forward and to move forward with due deliberation and sincerity. This is a new administration with an overwhelmingly fresh mandate from the electorate. It is expected of us to review with due diligence all the agreements that have been signed. This does not mean that we will reject them--it only means that we are in the process of increasing our understanding of the implications and meanings of the provisions. In this regard, we are not limited in our review to the agreements that were signed. We have read government’s internal reports and are receiving briefings from the relevant personalities. Soon, we will proceed to review the official minutes of the negotiations of the past nine years.

More importantly, we seek to assess how we can more effectively and efficiently comply with the obligations that have been committed by the past administration.

I confirm the observation of Al Haj Murad Ebrahim, Chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, that the ground situation is still acceptable. We are particularly pleased by reports that the International Monitoring Team and the other mechanisms are working satisfactorily. Even as we continue to review, we have honored our commitments that are necessary to provide for security, civilian protection and rehabilitation on the ground. This includes commitment of personnel as well as the proper budgetary allocations.

In the Aquino administration, a just, meaningful, comprehensive and durable peace is a major policy platform. Contrary to some naysayers from the past administration who continue to speculate based on their fears and inadequacies, the agenda is not simply counter-insurgency. Contrary to misreadings of alleged statements made from our military, there are no plans for a total war solution.

Soon enough, we will be ready to clarify our affirmation of the other agreements. If we are true to our word that we should only commit to what we can deliver, then we also need to do proper consultation and verification. To deliver means meeting the costs of that commitment--both financial and political.

The current peace talks address a domestic situation with international interest. Where the actual conversation takes place should be a function of where both parties are most comfortable. Where any negotiation takes place should facilitate discussion, it should not dominate the conversation. Like the MILF, we hope that this does not become an obstacle to reaching the more important goal of achieving a politically negotiated settlement.

We are specially appreciative of the various embassies that have visited us this past month. We acknowledge their willingness to continue to support the peace process We also acknowledge their recognition of the sovereignty of the Filipino people and territorial integrity of this Republic.

While expressing our utmost appreciation for all the international actors--state and non-state--that have come to share their time and other resources; we think it is legitimate for a new administration to review whether the current deployment is in harmony with its understanding of the national interest. There is a realpolitik in international relations. Also, good intentions notwithstanding, too many international actors can work at cross purposes to each other when located within a single ground. International interest and assistance is welcome, but it is we who will have to make sure that they facilitate rather than--unwittingly--deter an agreement.

We are eager to start talks on the one substantive agenda: the comprehensive compact. We are aware of the drafts exchanged by the parties on January 27, 2010. We will build on three realities: first, that the MILF has expressed that it has dropped its option for independence--that it is not negotiating for independence, but the highest form of autonomy; second, that the submissions of the parties (with Arroyo administration as the other party) are currently poles apart; and third, our mandate as framed by the President. We note that the MILF has rejected certain forms of “enhanced autonomy” and has proposed the idea of a establishment of a “state-sub-state form of governance in a future Bangsamoro state.”

The MILF should understand that we represent the government of the Republic of the Philippines. This includes many peoples and identities. This includes many stakeholders represented by various groupings. The MILF should also understand that our actions are measured against the framework of a Constitution--a constitution which, to my mind, provides space to find a political settlement including, if necessary and acceptable to all, a process of amendment and revision. I do not see the Constitution as a problem. I view it as a reality that we should deal with and should also be considered in finding the solution.

However, any good negotiator knows that attention to the process of the negotiation is as important as the substance of the conversation. We do not want the process to drive the substantive agenda. We want the process to facilitate it. And the process includes the levels of comfort that both negotiating parties have in relation to the parameters of the talks. It should include clear terms of reference that covers matters like the nature of the third party’s participation, protocols in communication, the setting of the agenda, sharing of the minutes of meetings, possibilities for direct conversations between the parties, role of international actors, among others.

Hence, I do not think that this new administration and this newly appointed negotiator can be faulted if we seek to review the terms of reference of the facilitation of the past discussions. I do not think that it is unwise for us to assess, based on the experience of the past panels and secretariats, whether we can be comfortable with the current facilitator. From our present understanding of what transpired towards the end of the past administration, this was even expected by the current facilitator. We would have thought that this would be welcomed by the other party and by the current facilitator (and the state to which she or he belongs), considering that it should show that we are sincere and professional in our tasks.

The challenge to the current administration is whether it has the creativity and political will to effect the necessary changes. The challenge to the MILF is whether it can be open, as creative and have the same political will to effect any agreed upon solution. The challenge to you is how you can engage constructively; and how you could help us meet the problems hurled by those who do not wish to engage constructively.

Our hand is extended in peace. It is extended consciously and deliberately. A hand extended in peace is a hundred times stronger and a million times more courageous than one than picks up a gun. Do not doubt the sincerity of this administration. Do not doubt my sincerity.

Take it, and let us make peace happen. Immediately.

Grand Gestures

June 30, 2010. Today, Benigno Simeon Aquino III takes his oath as the 15th President of the Republic of the Philippines amidst the protocol and tradition that marks the pomp of this public office. These rituals, framed by the provisions of a Constitution born after the struggles against an authoritarian, are important. They are grand markers of transition of leadership and, hopefully, of policy. Grand gestures of governance.

Yet, in spite of its pomp, the celebrations today dwarf in relation to the challenge of governance.

Governance takes place within the frame of mundane problems experienced by ordinary people. They are especially insidious. Food that is not only scarce and unaffordable but likewise lacking in nutrition. The possibility that man made activity can cause scorching heat and wild weather fluctuations to continue to take their toll not only through floods and land erosion but likewise the deficit in energy that can slow down, if not grind to a halt, economic activity. The conflict between their silent interests and that of corporate greed searching for gold and other irrelevant uses of property. The ubiquitous presence of pollutants, such as second and third hand smoke from cigarettes, that slowly but surely weaken the immunities of those who are truly poor. The family that cannot stay together because the available educational system structured their skills to be serve the menial jobs of two hundred other countries.

Decisions at the Office of the President will appear to be difficult. This is because there will be the inevitable choice between principle and survival against entrenched economic and, hence, political interests. The framing of the decisions will not be packaged as a choice of good and bad: rather they will be couched as the plausible and possible compromises. The choices will not be made legible simple through the invocation of phrases such as “people power”, “public participation” nor of “pagbabago”. For these are shibboleths proper for the grand gestures: in daily governance they painfully need specificity. For we have peoples: with multi-ethnic origins, with various cultures, in different classes and multiple needs and desires. The President needs to privilege some of them over the others. He is President of the entire Republic but he is also the hope to achieve a just society. Pagbabago also can really move in different directions. Leadership in this next generation requires clarity, certainty, accountability and responsibility for decisions made.

Decisions at the Office of the President will appear to be difficult only because vested interests require them to be vague and ambiguous only in their favor.

To President Benigno Simeon Aquino III we hope you do the right thing. Keep your vision the Philippines, not six years from now, but generations hence. Meet the challenges today. Go beyond the finite and parochial interests of those who are powerful. Make certain that our children and their children will not only have a sustainable future, but a quality of life that we can only dream today. Listen.

Then, I think, you will earn your place in history.

Message for the First Year Law Class
June 3, 2010
Draft

[Opening remarks during the Orientation Program]

If the statistics on the average life expectancy in our country is right, you have about fifty more years to live. Well, to be more accurate, the males among the audience have about forty nine (49), the females fifty one (51). Of course, depending on what you do to your bodies, mind and spirit, it can be earlier or later than these figures. If you are older than twenty, the statistical probability is that you have a lot less more in years left in you.

Of this average of fifty more years, you have gambled on spending four or five of your prime years here in the UP College of Law. Hopefully, and with a lot depending on how you make use of the resources that we have made available for you, it will be a wise investment. For almost half of you (we have a normal attrition rate of about fifty percent), you may discover that it would be an interesting experience but that there could have been other opportunities that you could have explored.

Reflecting on our deaths tend to put a powerful perspective on the things that we do. The sooner we realize that we are not immortal the more urgent will be our desire to to make the next moment matter. Acknowledging that we will not physically exist after about three or four generations should push us to those important moments in our lives when we have to make decisions about how we hope to matter--how we hope to be able to make a difference.

I can only hope, that the reason that you are sitting here in the audience today is because you have done that reflection and therefore are ready to take on the difficulties of the life of a law student.

But, today, I would like to add more to your reflection and invite you to think about the deaths of others.

In your country, the infant mortality is 21 out of every 1000 live births. Twenty one infants out of every 1000 die for various causes at birth. Many of these deaths are preventable and related to poor sanitation or poverty. Infants die without having the opportunity to go through the dilemmas that you have gone through. That number is about half of a first year block in the UP College of Law. Perhaps within that 21 could have been a national artist or a spectacular politician. Perhaps, most of them would have been able to at least finish high school and would have had the opportunity to be able to assist her/his family have at least three affordable meals a day.

The statistic is worse for maternal mortality. My sources say that there are about 170 mothers that die for every 1000 that give birth. Having had the privilege of witnessing the birth of a daughter, I know that child birth can be a very safe experience for the mother. I am also certain that the structure of our health services is such that those who may not have the financial resources are the most vulnerable to maternal mortality. The quality of our health services is largely a function of how our government is set up, the economic incentives embedded in our laws and the political economy that makes it difficult to see the reforms in law that we should expect as a decent society.

By the way, among the countries with the highest maternal mortality rates, we rank 48th.

But let me take you closer to your immediate environment.

Lung cancer kills 43 persons per day. This could be more except that some are able to afford the 100 to 150 thousand peso chemo treatment in charity wards.

The causes of lung cancer are many; but, scientists have made clear findings that smoking or any other form of tobacco use can definitely be one of its causes. In fact, smoking have other health and social costs. Estimates from the World Health Organization as reported by Newsbreak show that from 2002 to 2006 the health and social costs of smoking amounted to about 148.5 billion pesos. Government on the other hand only earned 23.26 billion from taxes and fees on cigarettes. The health and social costs of smoking is 17 times more than the government revenues earned from cigarettes.

My good friend from the School of Economics, Dr. Stella Alabastro Quimbo said it succinctly, in an interview:

“Smoking decreases the productivity of the Filipino workforce once they get afflicted with smoking-related diseases. If they die prematurely due to these diseases, it will cut their future income streams ... on top of this, the healthcare costs for these diseases are substantial. The aggregate cost of these diseases in terms of health care and productivity losses is the impact on the economy.”

The World Bank, in a recent study, agreed with the World Health Organization that one of the best ways to decrease the prevalence of smoking is to increase its price--ideally through increasing excise taxes on cigarettes. In New York, when I studied there for my LLM years ago, a cigarette pack costs about 25 to 30 dollars. Nobody could by it retail, i.e. by the stick. Here in the Philippines, the cost of a pack of cigarettes is relatively cheap. It is even more affordable if the nicotine addict buys it by the stick.

The accessibility of information regarding the pernicious effects of smoking tends to be regressive. That is, the higher your income bracket--the more access you have to reading materials, to the internet and to friends who are doctors--the better your chances of knowing that smoking is bad for you. No wonder, that smoking is a preventable cause of many diseases that is enjoyed more in the third world especially in rural or impoverished urban areas. Because of the setbacks of the tobacco industry, it is actively marketed more by cigarette manufacturers in the third world especially in rural and impoverished urban areas. Just compare the price of a stick of Champion with that of the best incarnation of Marlboro.

The next question therefore is why we have not increased excise taxes to about 66 or more percent ad valorem (almost the range recommended by the World Bank). Why is it that we do not ban the sale of tobacco retail? In fact, why not ban tobacco at all. Many of you will of course know the answer.

Law is created within a conjuncture of history. It’s content is often the result of a balance of political and economic power found within dominated forums, i.e. Congress and the Office of the President. This power can feed on a rationale promoted by a dominant culture or scripts fed by genealogies of ideas that harmonize with the interests of those in power.

Examine this specious argument: taxes cannot be increased too much for cigarettes because it will affect the poor tobacco farmer. Deconstructing that argument: the tobacco farmer is a farmer. S/he is as much affected by the pernicious effect of tobacco. And, as a farmer she or he can farm other agricultural products which may assist in our overall food security position. By the way, reducing tobacco use does not affect the farmer as much as it affects the transnational corporation that currently has about 90% market share in the Philippines. Reducing tobacco use will reduce the financial resources of a taipan who has had a great effect on the politics in our country--not to mention through his cases the jurisprudence on taxation and recently tort against a former Commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Examine another ingenuous argument: Tobacco smoking cannot be curbed because it helps reduce stress. Deconstructing this argument: stress is a part of life and how you deal with it can either be constructive or destructive. You can choose to do art or meditation or simply light up a cigarette which has no other beneficial health effect. And, by the way, the effects of smoking on your body increases your vulnerability to stress plus your second hand and third hand smoke endangers the loved ones for whom you try to tolerate your stress. Food servers in a smoking section of a restaurant are more prone to the effects of tobacco. Children of those who smoke are more prone to diseases as a result of second or third hand smoke. Third hand smoke means the chemicals that remain in your clothes, your body, your furnitures. These are the very same things that your baby will touch.

Parenthetically therefore for the smokers in our audience: know that when you light up your next cigarette you contribute more to maintaining a pernicious political and economic infrastructure and endanger those closest to you. Ironically, lighting up a cigarette is the most backward and anti-social thing that you can do.

[Please tell that to the incoming President of the Republic of the Philippines.]

There are many more of these arguments. But for so long as there are politically relevant producers and atomized consumers happy in their ignorance, laws will not change as meaningfully. Its implementation will have to be enticed with threats of litigation. And in all of these, there is a place for the competent lawyer with a social conscience.

There is more. What I have said of tobacco can also be said for alcohol or soft drinks or industrial products masquerading as food with large amounts of high fructose corn syrup. The patterns may even be the same for our excessive dependence on oil our use of useless mineral products such as gold and many others.

Dominated political institutions embed purpose and value in our laws. Our laws contribute to framing our social, cultural and individual lives. Prostitution--or the work of those who have nothing to sell except their ability to provide sex--is wrong, because it is illegal. Smoking--or the addictive habit that provides nothing except health and social costs--is alright because it is not illegal. We jail the woman prostitute. We reward the non-smoking taipan who establishes a very efficient network for distributing tobacco among the population.

Part of our role as lawyers is to be able to know enough to deconstruct law. But it should not end there. We should have the competence to be able to work the existing legal institutions to bring about the relevant reforms that can truly make our lives and the lives of others less fortunate than ourselves truly worthwhile, meaningful and happy. In this institution, we do not just mould you into being lawyers, we do not just introduce to you how “to think like a lawyer”, we do not just facilitate your experience as we teach law “in the grand manner.” The UP College of Law prepares you for social leadership.

You are our investment for the future of our own children. My hope is that we have chosen well.

Please do not let us down.