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PHILIPPINES

WATCH: 'Resist injustice:' Justice Leonen's speech at

lawyers' oath taking
'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,' says Associate
Justice Marvic Leonen

Rappler.com
Published 9:08 PM, June 25,
2020
Updated 11:03 PM, June 25,
2020

ROUSING SPEECH. Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic

Leonen delivers a rousing speech to lawyers who took their oath
on June 25, 2020. Photo courtesy of the SC Public Information
OTce

MANILA, Philippines – "Resist injustice."

This was the message of Supreme Court Associate

Justice Marvic Leonen to the new lawyers who took
their oath via Zoom on Thursday, June 25.

In a Yrst, the Supreme Court held the annual oath taking

of the new lawyers online, still complying to the
pandemic prohibition on mass gatherings.

Instead of at the Philippine International Convention

Center (PICC), the justices held the special en banc
session inside the Supreme Court, where all 14 (one
has retired) were physically present but with their robe
attires having the additions of face masks and shields.

Leonen, as the 2020 Bar chairman, delivered the

keynote address. (READ: Supreme Court to do pilot test
for computerized Bar exams)
Below is a transcript of the 23-minute speech that
trended on Twitter.

***

Congratulations. You made it. You hurdled the most

diTcult civil service examination in the Republic. Years
of toil and sacriYce 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 deYne 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 OTce of the Bar conYdante, 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 eTcient staff who
executed your guidance with enviable precision.

Justice Telly, it will be diTcult to follow your exemplary

performance. But I believe that every meaningful
challenge is always diTcult. 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 deYned 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 Ynd cures
and discover the vaccine, or governments Ynding 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 Ysh 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.

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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, Ylled 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 deYnitely,
information is not illumination.

ArtiYcial 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
Yngerprint.

Your unthinking approval of the terms of service, or

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

It will redeYne the role of humanity.

Institutions which dispense judgment or wisdom, like

courts, will soon have to adjust. Your generation is also
seeing the redeYnition 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 Yxed wage that often does not
even catch up with injation.

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 digniYed life
to their families.

In the meantime, ownership of successful enterprises

are given to passive owners who have the Ynancial
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 conYned 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 redeYne 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 stije 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 oTcer 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 diTcult 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 and fashionable 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 farmer's or Ysher's family become
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 Ynd that your situation is too diTcult as you

follow the noble path, remember these words which I
also keep repeating, which I Yrst heard from Lean
Alejandro, a good friend and activist in the 1980s. It has
become one of my favorite lines nowadays: "The line of
Yre 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 oTce,
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 diTculties 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. – Rappler.com

See Also
 Rappler Talk: Inside the Supreme Court with Justice Marvic Leonen

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PHILIPPINES

Supreme Court to do pilot test for computerized Bar

exams
2020 Bar chair Justice Leonen also says the Court must take a hard look at the Bar
exams and 'make its practices more reasonable'

Lian Buan
@lianbuan

Published 4:32 PM, June 25,

2020
Updated 4:32 PM, June 25,
2020
BAR EXAMS. Aspiring lawyers are greeted by supporters as they
take the last day of the 2019 Bar Exams at the University of
Santo Tomas in Manila on Sunday, November 24. Photo by Ben
Nabong/Rappler

MANILA, Philippines – The Supreme Court will be doing

a pilot test to computerize the Bar examinations,
according to Associate Justice Marvic Leonen.

Leonen is the 2020 Bar chairman, and as such delivered

the keynote address during the online oath-taking of
2019 Bar passers on Thursday, June 25. It was not
clear whether the pilot test is aimed for implementation
for the 2020 Bar.

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

to examine the various digital platforms for a pilot test
in computerizing the Bar, including how applicants
answer the exam questions," Leonen said during the
oath-taking.

"This would be a relief to those who would come after

you, with writing as bad as many as the justices of the
Supreme Court," said Leonen.

It was earlier announced that the 2020 Bar

examinations would be postponed to "sometime in
2021" because of uncertainties over the pandemic. It is
traditionally held Sundays of November ever year.

Leonen also said he wanted to "trigger a conversation

on the real nature of the Bar and make its practices
more reasonable."

This has been a longtime debate in the legal education,

as some experts think law schools turn themselves into
Bar schools, aimed mostly at making students pass or
top the Bar rather than learning the essence of law and
justice.
"The Bar is merely a qualifying examination, not a
determinant of how good you will be as a lawyer.
Certainly it will not measure your worth as a person,"
said Leonen.

Leonen follows the reforms in the 2019 Bar

examinations, where Bar chair Senior Associate Justice
Estela Perlas Bernabe revised the syllabus, and
removed topics that are obsolete or no longer relevant
in the practice.

"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 in the
examinations and present the results," said Leonen.

Leonen earlier said he would pitch a pass-or-fail design

for Bar results, a departure from the decades-long
practice of scoring examinees to the decimal, and
making a spectacle out of the Top 10.

"Soon enough we will make the proper proposals for

the consideration of the Court en banc. Chief Justice
Diosdado Peralta has ensured that I could work with the
next bar chairpersons in order to have a strategic view
of the reforms that would happen," said Leonen. –
Rappler.com
Subscribe
Email Address

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Huddle by Miriam Grace Go

The Newsbreak Agenda by Chay HoYleña

Sometimes, all you need is video by Lilibeth

Frondoso

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Leave a comment !