The following is the valedictory address of Juris Doctor cum laude graduate Carlos Hernandez

during the Commencement Exercises of the UP College of Law Class of 2017.

Honorable Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III, UP President and Dean Danilo
Concepcion, the members of the UP Board of Regents, Chancellor Michael Tan,
the distinguished members of the UP College of Law faculty, our beloved parents,
friends, loved ones, and most especially my fellow UP Law graduates, a pleasant
afternoon to all of you.

Eight years ago, I was working in a pharmaceutical plant in Laguna for 12 hours a day,
from Monday to Saturday. It was a 12-hour shift, 6 days a week in the middle of the
production line. I am a chemical engineer. I loved my job then but my childhood dream
of becoming a lawyer continued to haunt me while I supervised the production of drugs,
of course the not prohibited ones.

Attending law school after work from Laguna was impossible. Its only when I was able
to find a job in Makati that finally I looked up the evening sky and saw that the stars had
aligned to make my childhood dream of becoming a lawyer closer to reality. The LAE is
the only entrance exam I took not so much because I adore UP Law but because UP
Law is the only law school I can afford. I was a working student, and I attended classes
at night.

I would report to work at 7 am so that I can leave at 4 pm and avoid the MRT rush hour
on the way to school. MRT becomes a war zone during rush hour. I would read my
cases while standing inside the moving train. During rush hour, in a jam-packed,
canned-sardines scenario, where I am sandwiched between fellow passengers, reading
cases would be an act of bravery. Sometimes I was not that brave enough.

I would also read inside jeepneys unmindful of the heat and traffic congestion around
me. Learning the law in solitude while commuting became a ritual. It became my sweet
escape.

My mother, on various occasions, asked me to quit my job and offered to finance my

education. I would only look at her and say nothing because I know that she would be
borrowing money again just to send me to school. The love of a mother is pure.

My story is similar to the stories of many of my classmates in the evening block. Their
stories, though, are far more inspirational. A blockmate who is also graduating today is
a breadwinner who had to send his 3 younger siblings to school with his meager salary.
A blockmate has to put her baby to sleep after class. Another blockmate still has to work
after class for his graveyard shift in a BPO. The road we had to take to arrive at this
moment of so much joy and great pride was paved with sweat, tears, but most of all,
love. I would like to honor them today as it is such a great honor to learn the law in their
good company.
Our stories are a testament to the truth that the doors of the UP College of Law will be
opened to those who are brave enough to knock, and stubborn enough to knock
repeatedly and persistently.

Each of us here had to overcome many obstacles on our way to becoming lawyers.
These obstacles may not be in the form of juggling work and law school or in the form of
doing a balancing act like reading SCRA while standing in a moving jam-packed MRT,
but all these obstacles tested our grit nonetheless. Today we reap the fruits of our labor.
And today we honor those who are with us every step of the way.

Our graduation is one of the most eloquent ways of thanking our parents for making our
dreams come true. We thank you, our dear parents, for the love that is pure, selfless
and unconditional, the kind of love which our law books tell us is so difficult to find. I
thank my mother too who is here today for the selfless love she gave her son who is so
ambitious to dare to become both an engineer and a lawyer despite our extremely
limited resources. Maraming salamat po, Nanay.

I always imagine Malcolm Hall as Hogwarts where wide-eyed law students like me are
under the tutelage of professors like Prof Dumbledore, Prof McGonagall and Prof
Snape, who are the leading experts in their respective fields. I would not name who I
imagine to be Dumbledore, McGonagall, or Snape or well, Dolores Umbridge. Thank
you from the bottom of our hearts. We will forever be grateful for the knowledge you
have imparted to us, and for giving us such intellectual experience that is one of a kind.

I would like to thank, in particular Prof Mark Dennis Joven, my professor in Credit
Transactions. I flunked his midterms. Instead of signing my dropping form he challenged
me to study hard for my finals. I would not have been a member of the Order of the
Purple Feather, and would not be speaking before you now had Prof Joven signed my
dropping form. Thank you Sir for believing in me at that time when I failed to believe in
myself.

Dumbledore once said: Help will always be given at Hogwarts, Harry. [And I imagine
myself as Harry. Or better yet Hermione. . . because she is brilliant and bold.] I made
friends in law school whom I will cherish for the rest of my life. Thank you for being my
anchor. I found a treasure in Malcolm Hall and that treasure is our friendship.

This is not to say that sheer determination alone is enough to reach one's dreams. I do
not want to contribute to the spread of the big lie that poverty is not a hindrance to
success. It is. Poverty IS a hindrance to success.

My life as a law student became more manageable with the scholarship grant from the
family of the late Justice Jose Campos and Prof Maria Clara Campos. Every semester I
would have lunch with Ms Patricia Campos-Domingo and Atty Rico Domingo. They are
here with us today. Thank you Maam Patricia and Sir Rico for everything. I promise to
pay it forward someday.

I could not have afforded UP Law if not for the subsidy of the taxpayers. I will forever be
grateful to each and every taxpayer who subsidized my UP Law education. And I hope I
can repay them big time one day.

Five years in law school were both a humbling and rewarding experience. The
experience made my resolve stronger to fight for the things that are worth fighting for.
Allow me at this point to share my thoughts on 3 issues that are close to my heart.
These are gender, privilege, and most importantly, rule of law.

ON GENDER

At first I thought law school would be an ultraconservative enclave. I once feared that
students like me who are members of the LGBT community would have to suppress our
gender identity and expression so that we would not attract too much attention to
ourselves. I even practiced introducing myself to my professors and classmates in an
alpha male voice, which is, of course, not my real voice. I practiced saying I AM
CARLOS HERNANDEZ JR. in front of a mirror several times. I was wrong. Because
the moment Prof Gaby Concepcion entered the room for my first class in law school, I
knew right then and there that I belong, that I did not have to use a different voice to
introduce myself to her and to my classmates. In my fifth year in law school, together
with my LGBTQ+ friends in Malcolm Hall, we founded the UP OUTLaws, an
organization of law students who self-identify as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and
transgenders, and many more.

We also found an unlikely rainbow ally in Dean Pacifico Agabin. Dean Agabin is of the
view that to bar the lesbians, the gays and the transsexuals from the civil right to marry
would violate the guarantee of equal protection, and that the concept of marriage under
the Family Code as a contract between a man and a woman is obsolete.

I fear that there are those who still think that a lawyer is less effective or less credible
simply because he is gay or is flamboyant. That is why I think gay lawyers suppress
their gender for professional reasons. I am confident that the members of the UP Law
Class of 2017 would not entertain any such homophobic notion. One of the reasons why
I studied so hard is because I want my competence to be measured based on merit
alone, and that my gender would not get in the way of me getting retained, hired,
promoted or even appointed.

Its about time that we extend the equal protection of the laws to the people who do not
fit into the oppressive gender and sexual binary by passing the Anti-Discrimination Bill,
and by making the institution of marriage accessible to everyone, and I mean everyone.
The glass ceiling against women in the legal profession is gradually being shattered by
the influx of many brilliant women lawyers. Our Chief Justice is a woman. The Chair of
the Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitution is also a woman,
Justice Cecilia Muoz-Palma. I hope that the same glass ceiling set against LGBTQ+
members in the legal profession would have big cracks on it soon, and be completely
shattered forever. Our only wish is that we will be judged not by the effeminateness of
our voices, not by the gayness of our faces, but by the content of our character and by
the sheer force of arguments in our pleadings.

ON PRIVILEGE

There are two aspects of privilege that I would like to highlight about being a UP
graduate and a UP Law graduate in particular.

Firstly, our UP Law education gives us a certain level of credibility whether we deserve
it or not. This is a double-edged sword. We can use it to educate or to ridicule. The
rampant smart-shaming against UP students may have its roots in the tendency of
some of us to mock. Maybe we have been using ridicule as a tool of persuasion very
often, even at times when the circumstances do not warrant its use. We have been
mocking the uninformed and the ignorant as if the quality of the opinions they form and
things they believe in are ultimately of their own doing alone, without taking into account
that they might not have been exposed to the kind of education we have been exposed
to because of circumstances beyond their control such as abject poverty.

Of course, fake news, attempts to revise history, and malicious propaganda being
propagated by self-serving individuals must be dealt with, with the full force of what we
know and what we believe in. Now more than ever, we need to win the war against
untruth, and the battle against memory.

Secondly, the culture of pervasive othering has to stop. I am referring to our tendency
to label people who are not from UP as The Others with all the derogatory and
pejorative connotations we attach to the label. It is harsh to even joke about ones
competence based on the school one has attended. It is a subtle way of speaking highly
of oneself by reducing anothers worth.

We raised our voices so that the muted cries coming from the graves of the victims of
Martial Law would be heard when Marcos was buried in Libingan ng mga Bayani. We
protested against the death penalty because it is a cruel and inhuman punishment and
the usual victims of wrongful convictions are the poor. We are also the first to express
our indignation against the disregard of due process in this administrations war against
drugs. Let us be hated for these reasons, which are principled reasons, and not
because we are seen as boastful of the education that we received.

The thing about privilege is that its like air: were oblivious to its existence yet its
always there.
ON RULE OF LAW

The rule of law is the raison d'tre of the legal profession. It is pointless for all of us here
to master the law if we could not even invoke it. We assume that everyone should
appreciate and cherish the due process of law.

But we are wrong. We are wrong to assume that we share the same faith in and
devotion to the rule of law with the rest of the public. Law or due process is now seen by
many as an unnecessary bureaucracy, an inconvenience, or worse, a tool for the
dangerous elements of our society to go unpunished and roam free. We are suddenly
awakened that our shared belief that the rule of law is beneficial to all is, in reality,
abhorred and despised by many.

We are shocked that many of the poor and the powerless approve of disregarding due
process even if it is their only shield against the arbitrary use of the states power.

We all graduate today against this gloomy backdrop.

In a world marred by so much inequality, the last bastion of hope in preserving our
dignity as men and women is the law. The moment this last bastion collapses, the only
alternative left is a revolution which can be bloody and violent. May our graduation
today bring balance to the force.

I was advised not to be preachy to you in this speech. And I am heeding such wise
advice. Our venerable professors who are literally and symbolically facing us now have
done a good job in instilling in us the value of honor and excellence. Their constant wish
is for us to give back. Much has been given to us. Let us give back much more.

To that well that our professors have allowed us to fetch wisdom, let me just add
something mundane. It is in our best interests as future lawyers that the rule of law
reigns forever supreme in our land, whatever political sides we may find ourselves in.

If there is no rule of law, our soon-to-be profession would become obsolete. We would
be reduced to mere actors and actresses in a pantomime whose only role is to give
semblance of legitimacy to a legal system run by whoever is in power or who can give
the highest bribe.

I have no doubt that many of us will be successful and brilliant members of the legal
profession. Some of us, years from now, will be in positions of power. Some of us will
wield the awesome powers of the State. We will become close advisers to those who
wield such powers.
My only hope is that when the moment comes that we have to take a position on a
simple legal question that becomes complex because of political or financial
considerations, whatever creative legal position that we take, may it always be
something that fortifies, and not something that undermines, the rule of law.

There are some lawyers who now spit at the supremacy of the courts in all things legal
just because they are now ensconced in the other two co-equal branches of the
government, the legislative and the executive. They willfully forget the fundamental
rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights they once memorized so that they can cling to
power. Let us not follow in their footsteps. Let us instead erase those footsteps from the
face of the earth.

The people have lost faith in a system they rightly perceive as highly legalistic, always in
delay, and serving only the interests of the rich and the powerful.

Martin Luther King Jr once said: [W]e shall overcome, deep in my heart I do believe we
shall overcome. And I believe it because somehow the arc of the moral universe is long
but it bends towards justice.

My fellow graduates of the UP College of Law, I am excited to work with all of you, as
future great lawyers of this nation, in bending this stubborn arc towards the direction of
justice. Maraming salamat po.