Republika ng Pilipinas

Supreme Court
Manila

LEADERSHIP IN LAW: OUR MISSION AND MANDATE

Hon. Maria Lourdes P. A. Sereno*
Chief Justice
29 April 2013

Dean Danilo Concepcion; Associate Dean Concepcion Chit Jardeleza;

College Secretary Gisella Gigi Reyes; former Deans Froilan Bacungan ;
faculty members and administrative staff; proud parents, family members,
spouses and significant others, guests and friends; most specially, the
members of UP Law Class Of 2013: Good afternoon to all of you.

First of all, allow me to congratulate you, the members of UP Law Class

2013, on your graduation from the University of the Philippines. You have
just crossed over from the relatively secure confines of Malcolm Hall,
where your life revolved around two R words, Readings and
*

Commencement speech delivered by Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P.A. Sereno on 29 April
2013 during the Recognition Rites for the University of the Philippines College of Law.

Recitation, to the so-called real world, where you, as UP lawyers, would

be charged with presiding over yet two more R words, Reforms and
Revolutions.

Of course, there is still that intermediate step between academic life and
the real world which we call the bar examinations, where life as you know
it comes to a virtual stop and everything you do revolves around yet
another R word, Review. But there is a time and a place for everything
and at this time and in this place, we are here to rejoice with you.

But, dear graduates, today also is a day to recognize those on whom

much of your efforts have rested: your parents, spouses and significant
others, children, family members, friends and loved ones. This day is for
them also because, in a very real way, they have also lived through
Malcolm Hall, though vicariously. As you studied, you have been loved,
encouraged, supported, tolerated, fed, and sustained by them. In them,
you found people to tell your law school stories to; people who endured
your rants; who tried to understand your hours; and worried about your
fixation with caffeine and coffee houses.

All throughout law school, their words and presence were a balm to
wounded souls, especially on days when every recitation resulted in 5s
and no measure of comfort could be found in spirits of other sorts. And
because the busy-ness of life in Malcolm Hall might not have given you the

time and opportunity to say it, we want to take this opportunity, at this time
and in this place, to salute you, to applaud you and to thank you.

Finally, we also recognize today those whose efforts have been

instrumental, though largely unsung and often underappreciated, in
transforming, shepherding, mentoring and training youthose who have
made it their mission to transform raw potential into fulfilled promise, to
channel youthful passion into mature purpose, and whose professional
DNA now runs in you. Let us take this time also to thank your professors.
And, not less importantly, let us also take the time today to recognize those
in the College whose efforts are truly unsung: the administrative personnel,
whose sweat and toil provide the backbone upon which Malcolm Hall
operates efficiently and well.

Mission and Mandate

Friends, today I want to start by recalling the words that every UP Law
graduate is intimately familiar with The function of a law school is not
sufficiently described when we say that it is to teach law and to make
lawyers, it is to teach law in the grand manner and make great lawyers.

Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke these words over a hundred years ago
when he exhorted his law school to teach law in the grand manner. By
this Holmes meant that a law school should go beyond the obvious, the
expected, the conventional, the traditional and the imaginable.

Generations of UP lawyers have appropriated Holmess words as a

mantra. Today, I recall those words to sum up what it means to be UP
Lawteaching law in the grand manner is our mission and to become
great lawyers is our mandate. Beyond the nice sounding words, however,
we want to ask ourselves what exactly it means to be taught in the grand
manner and to be a great lawyer.

To say that we are taught in the grand manner is to also proclaim our
identityas being set apart as not being merely skilled technicians trained
for trade but as passionate and principled advocates, thinkers,
philosophers, historians and leaders in the law.

It is to say--here stand the innovators, those who think creatively, those

who can see both the trees and beyond the trees to the forest; here stand
those who are able to see how our collective remembering, or perhaps
collective forgetting, of our nations history lends to what our legal and
judicial system is now and what, hopefully, it will be in the future; here
stand those who see law as an overarching frame to govern a manner of
thinking and not just a convenient formula to solve a specific problem that
is at hand; here stand those who refuse to be unduly bound by the inertia
of tradition and passionately leads the initiative and the impetus of change.

Almost all law schools in the country gear their curriculum towards
preparing their graduates to pass the bar examination; but sadly, it is only

a very small minority that devote time and effort to offer multi-disciplinary
courses to produce not only skilled legal practitioners but also deep
thinkers and passionate advocates. The law curriculum and the system of
legal education needs to be radically changed from its obsessive
preoccupation with the bar exam to one where critical and creative
thought and imagination are encouraged and enhanced. The Supreme
Court has started discussions on how the modern Filipino lawyer needs to
be molded, and to what extent revisions in the law curriculum as a
precondition for the bar examinations must be undertaken. The thinking is
that the past must be fully reviewed, whether the content and methodology
that have thus been found in the bar examinations genuinely allow the kind
of lawyers that must emerge successful from the examinations, to emerge.

While we are happy with the success of UP Law, relative to other law
schools in the 2012 bar examinations, we need to go beyond the bar
examinations and be, as Cardozo describes, both prophet and martyr
undistracted and undeterred by the hooting throng but whose eyes are
fixed on eternity.

Part of what I espouse as a Judicial Reform Agenda for the Court during my
watch is a re-emphasis on the integrity and credibility of a lawyer and a
judge. This goes beyond holding erring lawyers and judges accountable
which we have and which we continue to dobut involves a reexamination of the reasons why judges grievously err and lawyers take
short cuts. It requires an understanding of context and circumstance, as

shaped and influenced by history, relationships, politics, administrative

systems, economics and culture. Understanding how good lawyers fall or
how bad lawyers are created requires an understanding of how character
is built and an appreciation of the crucible in which ones character has
been forged. It requires going beyond simply teaching legal principles and
judicial precedents but necessarily an understanding of the nuances of
other disciplines as they affect the lawyer.

The teaching of law in the grand manner necessarily calls for a reorientation to allow for more multi-disciplinary discourse and interaction. It
is only through interactions with deep thinkers from philosophy, ethics,
sociology, psychology, the arts and humanities, history, engineering and
science and technology that lawyers may be better prepared to face the
futureone where hard questions are asked and challenging narratives are
offered. We must produce lawyers who are unafraid to ask difficult and
sometimes awkward questions, to take part actively in the public
discoursein or out of the courtrooms and boardrooms.

In all these, the University of the Philippines College of Law must continue
to take the lead. And I am confident that our beloved alma mater will
continue to do so.

I am confident in hurling this challenge because I spent many of my best

years in UP Lawteaching, researching, writing and, yes, leading. I know
that UP Law is uniquely situated to lead, not only because it enjoys fiscal

autonomy and academic freedom under the UP Charter but also because
the UP Law Center offers almost unprecedented resources to support this
leadership role.

UP Laws greatest service to the people would be to continue to train and

produce lawyers who are ready, willing and able to launch reforms and
lead peaceful revolutions. It must continue to produce men and women
who are unafraid to articulate positions that may disturb and unsettle, for
so long as those positions are true.

At the same time, these graduates of UP Law must be taught to discontinue

the public perception that lawyers are arrogant, selfish, and carry
themselves with a sense of entitlement. And this humility is all the more
expected, because the UP Law graduate has become one, only as a
matter of privilege granted by the Filipino taxpayer. The UP Law graduate
is not really in a position to boast of his or her own merits - he will always
be honorably burdened with the tremendous debt he owes to all who have
made UP Law the great law school that it is, and the sacred charge from
the Filipino people that he must be, first and foremost, a lawyer for the
people.

For UP Law to continue its noble role, it must continue to provide the fertile
ground on which the seeds of reforms and revolutions may fall, take root
and grow. It must allow itself to be the breeding ground, once again, for
intellectual ferment and for critical thought. It is a task that is difficult but

necessary for it is only by doing so that the aim of a law school may be
achievedthat which Holmes describes as not to make men smart, but to
make them wise in their calling and to kindle in many a heart an
inextinguishable fire.

Even now, as Chief Justice, I am seriously looking at Article 5 of the Revised

Penal Code, which requires the court to report to the President for possible
legislation, acts that in its view should be repressed, as well as when the
strict enforcement of a statute would result in the imposition of a clearly
excessive penalty. I am also looking at Article 9 of the Civil Code, the
directive that courts should render judgment even in the light of the silence,
obscurity or insufficiency of the law, and what this directive means for law
reform. I am also looking at Section 1 of Republic Act No. 3870, that
defines one of the functions of the UP Law Center as the undertak(ing of)
technical studies in law ... particularly for reforms in the judiciary ... in
relation to advancing the Courts judicial reform agenda, and what it
additionally means in relation to the courts role in law reform under Article
5 of the Revised Penal Code and Article 9 of the Civil Code.

The Question of Character

The question of producing great lawyers is ultimately a question of

character and it is one that is peculiarly addressed to law schools.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, The Use of Law Schools in SPEECHES, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd, New Jersey;
2006).

Id. at 40.

More than just allowing mastery of the law, law schools must inculcate not
only the knowledge of what is legal but also the conviction of what is
good, right and just. To be able to do the right thing, and to resist
compromising ones ideals and values, requires courage, perseverance
and fortitude; it also requires the strength to persist through challenges and
struggles, and to choose what is right even when it is difficult, even when
you stand alone and everyone else is against you. We must produce men
and women who, knowing what is right and just, choose to do precisely
that and resolutely stand by that choice.

Ours is a culture where the pressure to conform is very great. Pakikisama,

bigayan, and smooth interpersonal relations are highly valued in Philippine

culture, and the pressure to just say yes, to go along with the crowd even if
it is not right, is very strong. To be able to do the right thing in the face of
opposition requires courage, strength of character, and integrity.

The story is told about a lawyer who chooses not to take an oath that
would compromise the very core of what he believed in but, in choosing to
do so, places himself at great personal peril. When confronted about this
refusal by his distraught daughter who offers him what, to her, seems a
reasonable compromise--take the oath, save yourself, and simply break
your oaththe lawyer responds with a rebuke that his word is his bond.
When the daughter persists with the reasonable reply that no one would
know, the lawyer retorts, I would know.

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The situation I have described is portrayed in a film about a great lawyer

and a good judge; the film is A Man for All Seasons and the man
described is St. Thomas More. It is a film that shows us what character is
and what it can do. It embodies what Justice Florentino Feliciano, one of
the greatest lawyers this country has ever produced, has described as a
good judgewhere character is not only internalized but also
manifested.

Three simple words--I would know. Those words demonstrate an

internalization of character and an external manifestation of that character.

Character is what we are when no one is watching. It is holding on to

ones principles even when doing so isnt convenient, isnt fashionable or
isnt comfortable. It is refusing to compromise even if one is told that no
one would know because I would know. It is standing up for what is
right, even when no one else is standing up for it.

In this, UP Law must also continue to take the lead.

Producing great lawyers means producing women and men of character;

they who know how to stand for what is right; who can be counted upon to
speak up and speak out; who are unafraid to say I would know as a
riposte to those who would whisper, no one would know.

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A Counter-Culture of Character and Courage

A few days ago, 949 new lawyers took their oath before the Court. In my
remarks to them, I exhorted them to be part of a counter-cultureone that
is built on character and the courage of ones convictions. I want to exhort
you in the same way as you temporarily step out of Malcolm Hall. In that
speech, I challenged the new batch of lawyers not to commit the first
unethical, immoral or illegal conduct in their new lives as lawyers, despite
contrary advice from apparently well-meaning friends and despite the fact
that the necessary systems changes to effect judicial reform will require
time to take root.

In the same way, whatever sorry part of the history of UP Law you may
have seen or heard, regardless of any discontent you may have in the
leadership of the legal profession, ultimately, you alone are responsible for
your own conduct. You would know. And no amount of rationalization
and excuse will redeem you from the crooked path, should you take it.
Only acts of sacrificial love for the sake of our fellowmen, and, for those
who believe in eternity, to glorify the God that we worship, can redeem us
from a life of meaninglessness as lawyers.

Leadership in law is both our mission and our mandate. It is in your DNA
now. Be unafraid to take it on.

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The challenge to you, as you leave Malcolm Hall, is to continue asking and
acting, confronting and challenging even while you strive to be good,
humble, and just, even as you continue to do good and work justice in
whatever field you find yourselves in.

It is a challenge that countless women and men have taken on and

responded to. You have, with your graduation, joined that long line of
great lawyers taught in the grand manner. With that identity, it now
becomes both your mission and mandate to lead.

As you ponder what this challenge may mean for you, I want to leave you
with this reminder--you do not have to love the law in order to serve the
people, but you do have to love the people. As you leave Malcolm Hall, it
is my most fervent prayer that you may continue to love the people whom
the law seeks to serve and, in so doing, serve the people which the law
may not love--the very same people whose toil and tears have helped to
give you your legal education and whose very lives have helped you to
receive what many only dream oflessons in life and law that have been
learned, in a grand manner.

Mabuhay and God bless all of you.

-oOo-