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The Role of UP Law in Society UP Law Centennial Lecture 19 January 2012 Senator Edgardo J. Angara Chair UP Law Centennial Commission

The UP College of Law celebrates its centenary three years after the rest of the University. Strangely, the UP Board of Regents was reluctant to establish a college of law despite the Charters authority, and so implicit a suggestion, that it do so. The initial reluctance may be viewed in a favorable light by our distinguished rivals in the other schools but we, alumni of UP Law, think it was ill advised.

George Malcolm, who would become the first UP Law dean, thought it reflected a negative colonial view of native capabilities or the Filipinos unsuitability for the practice of law.

The colonial authorities, of course, were wrong. The success of many of our alumni in the practice of law, or in using its discipline in other fields, attests to the flaw in their colonial assessment.

Malcolm, like a lawyer, naturally took a circuitous route. He convinced the American and European Young Mens Christian Association (YMCA) to offer a law curriculum in English.

For lack of a law school using English as a medium of instruction in the country, the YMCA opened a law school in 1910 under the management of its English department. Classes were held in the Manila High School building in Intramuros.

Perhaps reflecting a disinclination for math and the exact sciences, the public responded enthusiastically to YMCAs law offering. This may have changed the minds of the universitys Board of Regents.

The following year, the Board established the UP College of Law. On July 11, 1911, the college formally opened to teach 109 students in the first year, and 29 sophomores who took their first year in the YMCA. A very lawyerly start, one might say, we started by poaching.

Indeed, in the next hundred years, the quickness and sharpness, or rather as we lawyers would say, the celerity and acuity, of UP lawyers would become legendary.

The first graduating class produced Manuel Roxas, the first President of the Republic; Ricardo Paras, Jr., Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; and Senator Alejandro de Guzman. Eulogio Benitez served in the House of Representatives; Emilio Hilado and Quirino Abad Santos became famous judges; and Feliciano Ocampo, public service commissioner.

This tradition of public service continues to this day, in all the branches of government. As nowhere else, you will see constant shifting among the alumni, from private to public life, and back again. As though the UP lawyer feels he has dues to pay to society for the privilege of his education, in part at the public expense.

The college also produced notable leaders outside the legal profession: in the police, education, the arts, in a wide array of businesses and even religion. The college would have produced five presidents had Fidel V. Ramos, a member of class 58, opted to continue the study of law rather than switch to Westpoint.

Thus, Conrado Benitez, Class 16, co-founded the Philippine Womens University in 1919, the first university for women in Asia.

Three decades later, Manuel Chan, Class 31, and Carmelino Alvendia Sr., Class 30, established the Manuel Luis Quezon University (MLQU), distinguished particularly in the teaching of law to this day. Alvendia went on to establish the Quezon City Academy in 1964. Another characteristic of the UP lawyer: untiring dedication. Loida NicolasLewis, founded Lewis College in her home province of Sorsogon in 1999 in honor of her late husband, the famous American entrepreneuri.

Other graduates, too many to mention, went on to lead other learning institutions, in the capital and in the provinces.

In the arts, the college produced distinguished alumni: Jose Aruego Jr., a writer and illustrator of childrens booksii, and Belinda Ty Casper, novelist, literary criticiii. Other published novelists include Esteban Javellana (Without Seeing the Dawn); Sancho B. Almeda (The Filipino Dream) and Gizela M. Gonzales Montinola (Where the Children Are).

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Fidel Sicam became a name in literary circles as a Palanca-award winning playwright and director of dramatic arts.

This great secular institution produced notable men and women of the faith as well: Father Constantino Nieva; Father Art Ferrer; Sister Mary Tarcila of the Order of the Good Shepherd; Sister Sonia S. Aldeguer of the Order of the Sacred Heart; and Sister Leticia Allado of the Religious of the Good Shepherd.

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Our alumni in business defy exhaustive enumeration, too many to start mentioning. They became builders of business empires in real estate, insurance, energy, mining, communications and transportation to name just a few of the fields of their successes.Allow me to mention Francisco Ortigas Jr., Class 31.

In media, Don Eugenio Lopez Sr., established what has become ABS-CBN, while Felipe Gozon and his daughter, Anna Teresa Gozon-Abrogar, founded and continue to own and run GMA-7.

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The College of Law also served as an ordnance platformClass 41 enlisted in the Army when war broke out and joined the underground after the Fall of Bataan. Peace drew law alumni to law enforcement in the police.

The college produced military leaders on both sides of the greatest conflict the Republic has undergone. Macapanton Jun Abbas, Jr. became secretary general of the Bangsa Moro National Liberation Front, bringing to that struggle his scholarly interests as reflected in his thesis Jihad and International Law.

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But history is not enough; the future beckons to the next generation of UP lawyers. Can they do as distinguished alumni have donefor country, for college and, being lawyers, pretty well for themselves?

That depends on the Colleges ability to evolve its teaching methods to meet the changing and mounting challenges facing the practice of the profession.

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The threat, or the promise, of specialization has pushed the great generalists to the side. Globalization has aggravated this trend. As the 2010 Financial Times Global Education Report notes: In todays world, a Superman-lawyerone who knows everything about anything (or at least claims to) is viewed with skepticism and disregarded in favor of the specialist.

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Those who know more about a narrower field, indeed, offer a tremendous advantage to business in legal conflicts. And if a business in legal trouble wants to cover its flanks, it should hire specialists in other fields. It is like that in warfare, and business is war.

The worst challenge to the legal professions very survival is the Economic Crisis of 2008 whose effects linger to this day. When the crisis hit, the first to go in corporate spending programs, after advertising, was the legal budget.

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Frankly it has always been like that; when lawyers win a case, the client thinks he was always right anyway. When lawyers lose a case, it is the lawyers fault for losing a winning cause. It is worse when good legal work keeps legal problems away from the client. Who wants to pay for what did not happen?

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Then, since law can be readthough not masteredby anyone literate, management consultants mine lawyers and pass off as their own insights the hard learned knowledge of their legal staffs. And since law, by its nature is and should be, routine and repetitivehence the preeminence of precedent in lawit is vulnerable to computerization. Soon fields of legal learning and practice can be packaged and sold like movies in DVDs or, worse, pirated versions.

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There is no way to fight this trend but to extend the same mental strengths required to master law to other fields as well.

Harvard Law School emphasizes its ability to offer joint degree programs, which allows students to earn another degree from any of Harvards other professional schools. Yale Law School employs a similar strategy, boasting that it encourages an interdisciplinary approach to the law. Its joint degree can be pursued in another university. In short, lawyers must take the competition to the enemys territory.

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This is the age of Global Law Schools. Opportunities to study abroad are no longer a part of a grant but a component of mainstream curriculum.

Harvard has exchange programs with the Geneva Faculty of Law, Sydney Law, Fudan Law in Shanghai, Tokyo University, Fundao Getulio Vargas Schools in Brazil, Chile Law in Santiago, and the Witwatersrand School of Law in Johannesburgiv. This development has become globally epidemic.

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But Philippine teaching and practice of law remains impervious to it.

Our profession firmly discourages foreign entanglements. Foreign legal scholars may not teach credited courses in Philippine law schools, let alone practice before our courts.

You can go, if you want, to take your masters abroad, but it will have a negligible, if any, effect on your practice back home.

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You can take the bar in New York but not in Manila. The Philippine legal profession, despite its evident talents, fears international competition.

These are the challenges facing the future teaching and practice of law. I believe that this time, the UP College of Law can lead, rather than follow, in meeting these challenges.

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Addressing the critical climate of the rule of law today, it is true that great views are being expressed across the board from all the law schools, with at least equal excellence, penetration and wisdom as any expressed from here.

But let us not judge law schools by the eloquence of the occasional practitioner in a moment of constitutional crisis. No law school can claim the erudite Pepe Diokno as its own. He read the law during the war yet passed the bar with the highest distinction to become one of the greatest constitutionalists of our country.

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Law schools are not established to create great men for great moments, but to make excellent everyday lawyers to protect good men in the ordinary course of law.

Those who, from that everyday but necessary vocation, rise to greatness will owe their eminence not from the school they attended, but from the conscience, values and the wisdom they acquire on their own.

Thank you.

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Reference:
http://www.balitangamerica.tv/the-filipino-championloida-nicholas-lewis/ http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/TLCBeatrice-International-Holdings-Inc-company-History.html
i

His book, Herman the Helper, was an Honor Book for the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in 1974. The picture book was written by Robert Kraus and illustrated by Jose Aruego and ArianeDewey.WeHide, You Seek, and Dance Away (written by George Shannon) were nominated for Nebraska's Golden Sower Award. Three books, illustrated by Ariane Dewey and Jose Aruego, are included in Barnes & Noble's Reader's Catalog of the Best 40,000+ Best Books in Print. These include Gregory, the Terrible Eater, Mitchell Is Moving, and Mushroom in the Rain.
ii

Her publications include: The Transparent Sun and Other Stories (1963); The Peninsulars (1964, novel); The Secret Runner and Other Stories (1974); The Three Cornered Sun (1979, novel); Dread Empire (1980); Hazards of Distance (1981); Fortress in the Plaza (1985, novella); Awaiting Tresspass: Wings of Stone (1986, novel); Ten Thousand Seeds (1987, novel); A Small Party in a Garden (1988, novella)
iii

Harvard Law School Study Abroad Program, available at http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/degrees/specialprograms/study-abroad/index.html (last visited Apr. 12, 2011).
iv