The Filipino Concept of Justice

Jose W. Diokno

We have been dominated by the West for so long; our

political institutions, our laws, our educational system,
all are copies of Western patterns; and the advertising,
television programs, books, magazines and newspapers
emanating from the West have deeply affected our values. In
these circumstances, can we hope to find a concept of
justice native to us Filipinos?

I suggest that we can, if we look to our language and

to our history.

Tagalog, Ilongo, Cebuano and Pampangos use a common

word for justice, katarungan, derived from the Visayan
root, tarong, which means straight, upright, appropriate,
correct. For us, therefore, justice is rectitude, the
morally right act; and also because it connotes what is
appropriate, it embraces the concept of equity, for which
we have __ native word, and for which on the rare occasions
that we use the concept, we employ the Spanish derivative
ekidad.

For “right”, we use karapatan, whose root is dapat,

signifying fitting appropriate, correct. The similarity in
waning of the roots of our words for “right” and “justice”
indicates that, for us, justice and right are intimately
related.

On the other hand, for “law” we use batas, a root word

denoting command, order, decree, with a meaning disparate
form that of the roots of our words for “justice” and
“right”. Our language, then, distinguishes clearly between
law and justice; it recognizes that law is not always just.

In this our language resembles English. English also

links the words “justice and “right”. Since it derives
“justice” from the Latin “ius” which means right; and
separates “justice” from “law” since it derives law from
the Old Norse word “log”, which means something laid down
or settled. But English does differ our language in two
respects; our term for justice, katarungan is native to us,
but the English term is imported, our word for justice
includes the concept of equity, the English word does not.

On the other hand, we use the same word kapangyarihan

for “power: and for “authority”; and this creates a similar
ambiguity, for it could mean that power confers authority
or that authority confers power or that power ought to to
be divorced from authority. Lately, however, we have tended
to be more and more to distinguish between naked power and
authority using the Spanish poder or the Tagalog lakas
which means strength, intensity to signify naked power, and
kapangyarihan to signify authority.

Two more points need to be made. One is that our

language employs the same word, katarungan, for both
justice and fairness, is it does for both justice and
equity. And although we use a native word, karapatan, for
right, we use a Spanish derivative, pribelehiyo, for
privilege. So it seems logical to conclude that the
fundamental element in the Filipino concept of justice is
fairness; and that the privilege and naked power- two of
the worst enemies of fairness are alien to the Filipino
mind.

The last point is that Taglogs have a root word tuwid

that is an almost exact equivalent of the Visayan root
tarong. Yet, Tagalogs chose tarong as the soured of our
word for “justice”, katarungan; and use tuwid to form
katuwiran, meaning straightness (not rectitude), and
katuwiran or katwiran, meaning reason, argument, with
overtone of self-justification or excuse an in mangatwiran,
magmatuwid, and cognate words. So we Filipinos know that
not every justification is just.

In summary, our language establishes that there is a

Filipino concept of justice; that it is a highly moral
concept; intimately related to the concept of right; that
it is similar to, but broader than, western concepts of
justice, for it embraces the concept of equity; that it is
a discrimination concept, distinguishing between justice
and right, on the one hand, and law and argument, on the
other; that its fundamental element is fairness; and that
it eschews privilege and naked power. By what standard
should we judge the content of “laws, policies and
institutions that seek justice in the Philippines?”

The first standard is that every law, policy and

institution must, if it cannot prompt, both the individual
rights of man and the collective tights of the people.

The rights of man are set out clearly and

comprehensively in our constitution, in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and its two implementing
covenants, and in sundry declaration of the United Nations
on torture, on slavery and forced labor, on refugees, on
territorial asylum; on the right of the child, on the
rights of mentally retarded persons and the like. Respect
for these rights is essential if we are to approach the
Filipino aspiration for freedom.

The rights of the people have only recently achieved

legal recognition. People as national communities have
three basic rights; and the right to survive the right to
external and internal sovereignty; and the right to
development. From these three basic rights flow freedom
from aggression and from intervention in internal affairs;
the rights to territorial integrity, police independence,
sovereign equality and international social justice the
right freely to choose their economic, as well as their
political, social and cultural systems, and the means and
goals of development, without outside interference in any
form whatsoever, full, permanent sovereignty over all
national wealth, natural resources and economic activities,
which includes the right to regulate and supervise foreign
investment and the activities of transnational
corporations, and to nationalize, expropriate of transfer
ownership of foreign property; and finally, the economic
and social consciousness, thereof, as a prerequisite for
development.

But given the present condition of Philippines society,

these standards are not enough.

In addition to the denial of human rights and of the

people’s rights, our society today is characterized by a
third malady, poverty and inequality. What the degrees of
poverty and of inequality are, and whether they are abating
or increasing may be disputed- but not even the most
obsequious follower of what used to be called a new society
and is now called a new republic (as if the world “new”
were a perfume that overcomes the stench of the old), no
one – I repeat- could honestly deny that there is too much
poverty and too much inequality in our land.

Nor could anyone honestly deny that this poverty and

this inequality are not the fault of the vast majority of
those of our people who are afflicted by them. In a mixed
bur capitalist-biased economy such as we have, a person’s
income is the result of four factors: the amount of
income-producing property he owns, his skills his
productivity and the market value of his skills. There
isn’t much any one can do about the market value. What
skills one has, moreover, and their quality and
productivity are products of one’s education, one’s
preferences and one’s health and one’s education is, for
the most part, the result of what one’s parents could say
for: one’s health, the result of what nutrition one’s
parents could give one caring the formative years of
childhood. One’s skills and productivity, therefore, are
greatly affected by the wealth and income of one’s parents.
So too, is the income-producing property a person acquires.
Property can be acquired honestly by inheritance or by
purchase, or dishonestly by excortion, bribery, political
influence, fraud, or theft. But inheritance depends on the
wealth of parents and as we have shown, so does, in large,
measure, the capacity to earn income with which to buy
property. In short, the poor and inequality, shame,
oppression, exploitation and abuse- Plutarch pointed this
out more that two thousand years ago:

A mere law to serve all men equal rights is but

useless, if the poor must sacrifice those rights to pay
their debts and in the very seats and sanctuaries of
equality, the courts of justice, the office of states,
and the public discussions be more than anywhere at the
book and bidding od rich.

To attain the Filipino concept of social justice, then,

laws, policies and institutions must consciously strive by
effective means.
 Two to select a means of developing and using our
natural resources, our industries and our commerce to
achieve a self-directed, self-generated and self-sufficient
economy, in order to produce enough to meet, at first, the
basic material needs of all, and afterwards to provide an
increasingly high standard of living for all, but
particularly for those with lower incomes and to provide
them with enough leisure to participate creatively in the
development and the enjoyment of our national culture; and

Three, to change those relations and structures of

relations between man and man, between groups and between
communities that cause or perpetuate inequality, unless
that inequality is necessary to improve the lot of the
least favored among our people and its burden in borne by
those who (heretofore have been most) favored.

These three standards complete the third part of

Filipino model of social justice.

They embody two different principles: first a principle

of reparation that looks back to repair the (injustice
inflicted by society) on the poor and the oppressed; and
the accompanied(accompanied? Eto yung nakasulat- “…and the
second and the third) a principle of change that looks
forward (to effect the internal) and external revolution of
which Mabini wrote in order to attain the aspiration that
Jacinto articulated:
That a Filipino’s worth who he is should not
depend on what he has.

Neither principle advocates or intends to abolish all

inequality nor to achieve a mathematical identity in
sharing social costs and benefits. I do not think it
realistic to pursue such objectives. Nature, chance and
accident do cause differences; these differences produce
inequalities and though we are achieving more and more
control over nature we cannot change nature, chance or
accidents. But we can change human relations and action;
and therefore, we can see to it that whatever inequalities
remain in our society is not caused by our relations and
our actions.
 Finally, neither principle seeks to do away with the
government or law. On the contrary, it is through honest
government enforcing just laws that the principle would
attain social justice. I so not know of another way.

We are now in a position to formulate a Filipino

concept of social justice, valid for today and hopefully
for tomorrow.

Social justice, for us Filipinos, means a coherent,

intelligent system of law made known to us, enacted by a
legitimate government freely chosen by us, and enforced
fairly and equitably by a courageous, honest, impartial,
and competent force, legal profession and judiciary, that
first, respects our rights and our freedom both as
individuals and as a people; second, seeks to repair the
injustices what society has inflicted on the poor by
elimination poverty a rapidly as our resources and our
ingenuity permit; third, develops a self-directed and self-
sustaining economy that distributes its benefit to meet, at
first, the basic material needs of all, then to provide an
improving standard of living for all, but particularly for
the lower income groups, with enough time and space to
allow them to take part in the end to enjoy our culture;
fourth, changes our institutions and structures , our ways
of doing things and relating to each other, so that
whatever inequalities remain are not caused by those
institutions or structures, unless inequality is needed
temporarily to favor the least favored among us and its
costs is borne by the most favored; and fifth, adopts means
and processes that are capable of attaining these
objectives.

Are these impossible to meet? If you mean meet

completely and immediately, perhaps they are. I do not
think so, yet I concede the point to be debatable. But only
yesterday in world time, it was thought impossible to land
on the moon. And not too long ago, Aristotle, one of the
wisest men, justified slavery as natural and listed torture
as a source of evidence. So standards thought too high
today may well turn out to be too tomorrow. But whether
they do so or not is not really important. Paraphrasing
Nikos Kazantzakis, the superior virtue is not to achieve
justice; it is to fight relentlessly for it. We struggle
for social justice in time, yet under the aspect of
eternity.