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 peoples 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
persons 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 isnt much any one can do about the market value. What
skills one has, moreover, and their quality and productivity are products of ones education, ones preferences
and ones health and ones education is, for the most part, the result of what ones parents could say for: ones
health, the result of what nutrition ones parents could give one caring the formative years of childhood. Ones
skills and productivity, therefore, are greatly affected by the wealth and income of ones 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 Filipinos 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.