VIRAL | Leonen delivers

powerful speech during

online oath-taking of new
lawyers
Newsbytes.PH

During the online oath-taking of new lawyers – a historic first

for the legal profession – on Thursday, June 25, Supreme
Court justice Marvic Leonen delivered a powerful speech
that has since become viral as it highlighted the solemn duty
that lawyers must perform in society and the role of
technology in fulfilling that responsibility in these troubled
times.
SC justice Marvic Leonen (Photo courtesy of Tere Tupas-Torres)

Below is the full speech delivered by Leonen:

Congratulations. You made it. You hurdled the most difficult

civil service examination in the Republic. Years of toil and
sacrifice have borne fruit.

You deserve the privilege to enter your name to the sacred

rolls of attorneys. The privilege of your title comes with a lot
of responsibility. Keep in mind that this title will not fully
define or constitute who you are.

You are more than your degrees and your professional titles.
They are your masks; behind these masks and titles should
still be authentic human beings. 

The presence and support of others made your

achievements possible. Your parents and close relatives
have nurtured, clothed, and fed you. Your many professors
have patiently, hopefully humanely, trained you.

Many others have been there for you. They are easy to
overlook – the food servers you have bothered while you
review, the men and women that cleaned up after you, to
name a few. They too deserve recognition and your
appreciation; treat them all well.

As an exercise of humility, soon after the ceremonies, and as

one of your priorities, please go back to them, say ‘Thank
you.’

Without a shadow of any doubt, Senior Associate Justice

Estella Perlas Bernabe also deserves our recognition and our
appreciation. Many deans have told me what we in the Court
have always known: she has exhibited exemplary leadership,
compassionately listening to all our concerns, creatively
addressing various problems as they came up, including
how we conduct this oath taking.

She continuously mentored her staff and the personnel of

the Office of the Bar confidante, giving space for the next
bar chairs and their staff to witness the preparations, the
implementation, and post-activities for the Bar
Examinations.
With leave of my colleagues, I daresay that we are
unanimous in saying that the 2019 Bar Examinations have
been well executed. The results show it. Congratulations,
Justice Telly, for a job superbly done.

Congratulations also to Ric and to your family who are

always there for you, and your efficient staff who executed
your guidance with enviable precision.

Justice Telly, it will be difficult to follow your exemplary

performance. But I believe that every meaningful challenge
is always difficult. The next Bar Examinations will meet the
standards of the Court En Banc and even as it builds on the
spirit of reform that has continued to inspire the present
Peralta court.

First, we will attempt to remove more inequities that are

inherent in the modality of the Bar Examinations. Already
with unanimous support, the Court En Banc has approved a
regional site in Cebu City for the Bar Examinations.

I have also been given the go-signal to drive a project that

will examine the various digital platforms for a pilot test in
computerizing the Bar, including how applicants answer the
exam questions. This will be a relief to those who come after
you, with handwriting as bad as many of the justices of this
court.
Second, I hope to trigger a conversation as to the real nature
of the Bar and make its practices more reasonable. The Bar
is merely a qualifying examination, not a determinant of how
good you will be as a lawyer.

Certainly, it does not measure your worth as a person. It is

the intention of the current Bar chair to take a hard look at
the various rituals that add unnecessary pressure on the
applicants, including the utility of midnight and last-minute
tips from well-meaning supporters, and the way we evaluate
the answers to the examinations and present the results.

Soon enough, we will make the proper proposals for

consideration of the Court En Banc. Chief Justice Diosdado
Peralta has ensured that I can work with the next Bar
chairpersons in order to have a strategic view of the reforms
that will happen. Already, Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa,
Justice Alexander Gesmundo, and Justice Ramon Paul
Hernando have been so generous in their advice. 

Every generation is defined by its responses to the

challenges and crises that confront them. Yours is no
exception. 

Obviously, this digital oath taking pro hac vice takes place
against the backdrop of a potential existential threat to
humanity. Its format is motivated by the Peralta court’s
desire not to put more people at risk by refusing to facilitate
the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

In truth, this pandemic poses a greater challenge than

prevention measures are a global effort to find cures and
discover the vaccine, or governments finding ways to
strengthen their health infrastructure.

Reports say that this pandemic will cause one of the most
malignant recessions in our history. Close to 1 billion human
beings will become poorer. Many will lose their jobs. Seeing
one’s children go hungry can lead to many acts of
desperation.

Law will take part in the narrative of providing succor as well

as remedies when needed.

Covid-19 is not the only existential threat we now face.

There are more.

Climate change and its dangers are imminent, if not already

present. Given current lifestyles, the UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change predicts that we will reach the
marker of increase in average world temperatures of 1.5
degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2040. 

That is only 20 years away. With current lifestyles, as you

approach the peak of your careers, you will experience a
myriad of globally catastrophic events, regular heat waves,
higher sea level rises, displacement and involuntary
migration of many communities, unpredictable weather
patterns, coral reefs breaching and dying off to almost
extinct, lower fish catches, droughts and the corresponding
decline in food production, and many more.

Studies are now hinting that changes in world temperatures

and unbridled human activity may make pathogens, like
viruses and bacteria, more common and more virulent.

Covid-19 will certainly not be the last pandemic.

Humanity’s task to slow down climate change is daunting. To

just slow down the pace of change, the entire world has to
reduce its fuel emissions to at least half of what it is now by
2030.

2030 is just 10 years from now. The entire world has to

massively shift from fossil based sources of energy to
renewables. We have to radically reduce our meat
consumption, with our current dietary trajectory and a
population of 10 billion by 2050, agricultural livestock will
contribute almost 25% of all greenhouse gases. 

Again, law will be conceptualized, crafted, promulgated, and

invoked to achieve all of these. Lawyers will be needed.

The very concept of democracy as an existential threat is

also now under strain. The promise of egalitarian democratic
forums through digital and wire technology has taken a
wrong turn. 

Today the Big Nine – Google, Amazon, Apple, IBM,

Microsoft, Facebook, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent – control
most of technology. Commercial motives have unleashed
the nebulous algorithms of advertising, digital addiction, and
epistemic bubbles. 

We willingly surrender our privacy and give greater control

over our information to the Big Nine, the malevolent forces
of the dark web, and those whose expertise is to undermine
sovereign exercises such as elections and democratic
referendums.

All this is happening when our attention is diverted, while we

spend time on food photography and the dopamine rush of
social media. Even our political and social consciousness is
falsely assuaged, and therefore effectively limited, because
we can voice our rants on Facebook or Twitter. We believe
that that is not enough.

Today we are seduced by a virtual world that pretends to

maintain friendships and relationships. The convenience of
cyberspace diverts us from authentic human relationships,
which are developed through face-to-face conversations
that are rather inconvenient, requiring patience, filled with
tentative emotions, sometimes painful, but always inviting
understanding. The digital world creates digital amnesia. It
diverts political responsibility, creates epistemic bubbles,
and breeds intolerance.

The sheer breadth of information, and our ability to save

unexamined information in our hard disk or in Cloud space,
replace critical analysis, deep thoughts, and the patient but
persistent evolution of our own personal philosophies. With
the buffet of information available to us, we have
conveniently forgotten a timely reminder from a writer Susan
Sontag that definitely, information is not illumination.

Artificial intelligence and its deeper variations such as

machine learning are now ubiquitous and deployed in whole
societies.

Surveillance comes with convenience. For example, it is

found in many of your smartphones, through your locators,
persistent and nonpersistent cookies, digital fingerprint.

Your unthinking approval of the terms of service, or end-use

license agreement. Not only does artificial intelligence
contain the possibility of replacing human labor, it will
challenge how human intelligence will be deployed.

It will redefine the role of humanity.

Institutions which dispense judgment or wisdom, like courts,

will soon have to adjust. Your generation is also seeing the
redefinition of democracy, as it witnesses the struggles of
various marginalized identities against the norms coercively
imposed upon them.

These are the indigenous communities, religious minorities,

including those who believe that an ethical life can happen
without a belief in a god or an institutional religion. Those
whose gender identity and expression of sexual orientation
do not conform to the dominant view. Their various
struggles in language, in culture, and in law will test our
postcolonial and often patriarchal present.

We live in a society where there is poverty, extreme

inequality, and social injustice rendered invisible by an ethic
of excess, a desiderata of comfort, and the false allure of
wealth in monetary terms.

Money is what begets more money through speculative

investments and passive income. In the meantime, labor can
only fetch a fixed wage that often does not even catch up
with inflation.

Rather than valorize labor as a human effort, labor in many

legal systems is perceived merely as a factor of production.
It is falsely viewed as undeserving of partnership or
ownership in an enterprise. Security of tenure is feared as an
obstacle that increases costs of production, pushing our
people to leave our country and go where they can seek
resources to give a dignified life to their families.
In the meantime, ownership of successful enterprises are
given to passive owners who have the financial capital. We
are a society where many of our best workers are scattered
in more than 100 other countries. We are a country in the
midst of a massive diaspora, with all its gendered and
cultural repercussions.

It is this generation where we witness a wave of

conservative populism that is gaining ground worldwide. You
see the challenges to the institutions that gather and speak
truth to power. Journalists worldwide suffer simply because
they seek to verify and validate the truth. Those who speak
truth to power, even in ordinary social media platforms,
experience what it means to be shamed and cyberbullied.

Trolling is also a sad Filipino phenomenon, and it is slowly

becoming systemic and organized. Our trolls are not
confined to any political color.

Untruths and fake accounts now present the prospect of

undermining the promise of an authentically deliberative
democracy. It challenges how our people will be
represented. Remember that the quality of our democracy
determines the quality and relevance of our laws.

We can ignore all of these. It is tempting to simply exist in

the protected comfort of our lives, succumb to the status
quo, just get rich, do our thing, and allow our existence to be
full of material possessions, but meaningless.

But we have a choice. We have the option to discover our

courage, live with the discomfort, critically examine our
society, and use our profession for a greater purpose that
humanity not only survives but thrives with social justice.

It is true that law, as part of culture, and as it is now,

constitutes us but we can redefine it. The legal profession
can choose to help craft, interpret, and apply the law so that
it provides solutions.

Lawyers can either refuse and view events narrowly, and

allow the law to further our collective human perdition, or we
can collectively use law to liberate. The rule of law is always
the rule of just law; it is no code for servility.

Your oath to the rule of law is not an oath of surrender to the

unjust and oppressive elements of the status quo. It is not
license to further marginalize those who are disadvantaged,
those who are poor, those who are abused by power and
untruths. Your oath serves as your power to bring about
change that is hopefully just, hopefully systemic. Your oath
is a promise to empower.

That is what is meant by the nobility of our profession. You

do not need to look far for these ideals. Your Constitution
mentions human dignity and human rights. It emphasizes
the intrinsic worth of every human life. It constitutes our
people – all our people, and not only the rich and those in
power – as sovereign, capable of demanding accountability,
disclosure, information, and space for freedom of expression
that does not stifle but shapes all opinion.

It acknowledges that property is a human construction, that

it has a social function, and that rights to create ownership
as well as wealth should not override our very humanity.
Remember that being a lawyer is not primarily about you.
Your profession is designed to make the problems of others
your problem. A lawyer cannot exist without a client or a
cause. Every case, whether banal or politically controversial,
will interrogate your ability to discover the ideals of justice,
equality, and meaningful freedoms.

Let me be clear about this, your task is not to hope or seek a

better world – it is more than that. Your purpose as a lawyer
is to use your life to shape law so that it authentically
contributes to the achievement of the best society for every
human being. It will not be easy. Even with the Atty in your
names, it will not be easy. Even when people start to call you
Justice, it will not be easy.

The process of building meaningful careers is accompanied

with painful experience and soul-searching. Making the right
decisions during times of crisis is a challenge. Often, you will
choose whether you will put your career on the line. It takes
a huge amount of courage, and the same amount of
conviction, to do what may seem unpopular, dangerous,
inconvenient, but right.

In the course of their careers, many a lawyer or judge or

justice or public officer lose their appreciation for the social
value of their profession. Somewhere along the way,
convenience takes the form of pragmatic silence. They
surrender the choice to make the difficult moral and ethical
decision, all to placate the status quo. They mistake the
public interest with debt of gratitude to the elite and the
powerful that continue to provide their wealth and create
their careers. Expediency overwhelms conscience.

I repeat what I have said many times: Our silence, when we

fall victim or after we serve as accomplices to corrupt acts
of the powerful, is also our own powerful political act. Our
silence maintains the status quo. It ensures that others will
also be victimized. Our silence in the face of abuse skews
power to the system in favor of those with resources and
against those who need the law more. Our silence
legitimizes greed and undermines the power of public trust.

Silence about corruption and abuse of power is not only in

itself unjust; our silence when we have the ability to speak is
in itself a cause of injustice.

Of what use is the palatial home, the latest car, the designer
coffee, the swanky shoes, the fashion bags and clothes,
when all these have been purchased on the backs of others’
sufferings?

Of what use is our convenience when our people live in

squalor? Of what use are our accolades when we do nothing
while the famer’s or fisher’s family becomes hungry?

Doing the right thing is necessary because of the poverty,

oppression, and helplessness of many in our society. There
are families that live in squalor; there are children who
cannot eat 3 meals a day; there are those who live through
oppression; there are children raped by their fathers and
uncles, and put in danger by the very schools that should
provide them with safe spaces; there are those robbed of
their youth by dangerous drugs; there are those whose
identities make them invisible.

When you find that your situation is too difficult as you

follow the noble path, remember these words which I also
keep repeating, which I first heard from Lean Alejandro, a
good friend and activist in the 1980s. It has become one of
my favorite lines nowadays: “The line of fire is always a place
of honor.”

Protect those who have less in life. Do not stand for abuse.
Be accepting of different identities. Speak up against
corruption. Do not succumb to having more than enough. Do
not trade kindness for the false badges of success. When
you enter public office, discharge it for the public trust that it
is.

Do not temper principle with pragmatism. Do not hide

behind comfortable acquiescence. Do not use comfort in
lieu of integrity. At critical times, do not disguise your
complicity. Instead, be at the frontlines. As a lawyer, resist
injustice. Make it your passion to resist injustice.

Strive for excellence not only in order to get you more titles,
not to land yourself in Top 10 lists of lawyers. Strive for
excellence because you need excellence with honor to
enable and empower the weak, the poor, the marginalized,
and the oppressed.

Remain humble. Listen and learn. There is wisdom in the

difficulties of our people.

These are your responsibilities. There is a lot to be done out

there.

Finally, if there is anything, remember this: Be better than us.

Walang magpapalaya sa atin kung hindi tayo mismo.
Humayo nang buong giting at tapang, paglingkuran ang
sambayanan.