LEGAL RESEARCH

ATTY. PATRICIA GAIL CAYCO-MAGBANUA

ARELLANO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW 1ST SEM SY 20-21

PLAGIARISM

 According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, to “plagiarize” means

 To steal and pass of the ideas or words of another as one’s own
 To use another’s production without crediting the source
 To commit literary theft
 To present new and original an idea or product derived from an existing
source

 Plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and
lying about it afterward.

 Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or

without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full
acknowledgement.

 "Plagiarism" occurs when a student, with intent to deceive or with disregard for
proper scholarly procedures, presents any information, ideas or phrasing of
another as if they were his/her own and/or does not give appropriate credit to
the original source. Proper scholarly procedures require that all quoted material
be identified by quotation marks or indentation on the page, and the source of
information and ideas, if from another, must be identified and be attributed to that
source. Students are responsible for learning proper scholarly procedures.

 FORMS OF PLAGIARISM
 Turning in someone else’s work as your own
 Copying words or ideas from someone else without giving them credit
 Failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
 Changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without
giving credit
 Copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up majority
of your work, whether you give credit or not
 Uncited idea
 Uncited structure or organizing strategy
 Uncited information or data from a source
 Verbatim phrase or passage that is not quoted
 Misrepresenting evidence
 Improper collaboration
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  Dual submission
 Abetting plagiarism
 Verbatim (word for word) quotation without clear acknowledgement
Quotations must always be identified as such by the use of either quotation
marks or indentation, and with full referencing of the sources cited. It must
always be apparent to the reader which parts are your own independent
work and where you have drawn on someone else’s ideas and language.
 Cutting and pasting from the Internet without clear acknowledgement
Information derived from the Internet must be adequately referenced and
included in the bibliography. It is important to evaluate carefully all
material found on the Internet, as it is less likely to have been through the
same process of scholarly peer review as published sources.
 Paraphrasing the work of others by altering a few words and changing their
order, or by closely following the structure of their argument, is plagiarism
if you do not give due acknowledgement to the author whose work you are
using.
 Collusion
This can involve unauthorized collaboration between students, failure
to attribute assistance received, or failure to follow precisely regulations on
group work projects. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are entirely
clear about the extent of collaboration permitted, and which parts of the
work must be your own.
 Inaccurate citation
It is important to cite correctly, according to the conventions of your
discipline. As well as listing your sources (i.e. in a bibliography), you must
indicate, using a footnote or an in-text reference, where a quoted passage
comes from. Additionally, you should not include anything in your
references or bibliography that you have not actually consulted. If you
cannot gain access to a primary source you must make it clear in your
citation that your knowledge of the work has been derived from a
secondary text (for example, Bradshaw, D. Title of Book, discussed in
Wilson, E., Title of Book (London, 2004), p. 189).
 Failure to acknowledge assistance
You must clearly acknowledge all assistance which has contributed to
the production of your work, such as advice from fellow students,
laboratory technicians, and other external sources. This need not apply to
the assistance provided by your tutor or supervisor, or to ordinary
proofreading, but it is necessary to acknowledge other guidance which
leads to substantive changes of content or approach.
 Use of material written by professional agencies or other persons
You should neither make use of professional agencies in the production
of your work nor submit material which has been written for you even with

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 the consent of the person who has written it. It is vital to your intellectual
training and development that you should undertake the research process
unaided.
 Auto-plagiarism
You must not submit work for assessment that you have already submitted
(partially or in full), either for your current course or for another qualification of
this, or any other, university, unless this is specifically provided for in the special
regulations for your course. Where earlier work by you is citable, ie. it has already
been published, you must reference it clearly.

 UNINTENTIONAL PLAGIARISM
 Not all cases of plagiarism arise from a deliberate intention to cheat.
Sometimes students may omit to take down citation details when taking
notes, or they may be genuinely ignorant of referencing conventions.
However, these excuses offer no sure protection against a charge of
plagiarism.

 It is plagiarism that results from disregard for proper scholarly procedures.

 Failure to cite a source that is not common knowledge.
 Failure to "quote" or block quote author's exact words, even if cited.
 Failure to put a paraphrase in your own words, even if cited.
 Failure to put a summary in your own words, even if cited.
 Failure to be loyal to a source.

 WHY DOES PLAGIARISM MATTER?

 Plagiarism is a breach of academic integrity. It is a principle of intellectual
honesty that all members of the academic community should acknowledge
their debt to the originators of the ideas, words, and data which form the
basis for their own work. Passing off another’s work as your own is not only
poor scholarship, but also means that you have failed to complete the
learning process. Plagiarism is unethical and can have serious
consequences for your future career; it also undermines the standards of
your institution and of the degrees it issues.

 5 WAYS TO AVOID PLAGIARISM

 Use direct quotes, or don’t quote at all
 Paraphrase with care
 Give credit where credit is due
 Beware of cutting and pasting
 Footnote as you go


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  IN THE MATTER OF THE CHARGES OF PLAGIARISM, ETC., AGAINST
ASSOCIATE JUSTICE MARIANO C. DEL CASTILLO.
 This case is concerned with charges that, in preparing a decision for the
Court in the case of Vinuya vs. Romulo, G.R. No. 162230, 28 April 2010, a
designated member plagiarized the works of certain authors and twisted
their meanings to support the decision.
 A.M. 10-17-SC
15 October 2010
 Petitioners Isabelita C. Vinuya and about 70 other elderly women, all
members of the Malaya Lolas Organization, filed with the Court in G.R. No.
162230 a special civil action of certiorari with application for preliminary
mandatory injunction against the Executive Secretary, the Secretary of
Foreign Affairs, the Secretary of Justice, and the Office of the Solicitor
General.
 Petitioners claimed that in destroying villages in the Philippines during
World War II, the Japanese army systematically raped them and a number
of other women, seizing them and holding them in houses or cells where
soldiers repeatedly ravished and abused them.
 Petitioners alleged that they have since 1998 been approaching the
Executive Department, represented by the respondent public officials,
requesting assistance in filing claims against the Japanese military officers
who established the comfort women stations. But that Department
declined, saying that petitioners’ individual claims had already been fully
satisfied under the Peace Treaty between the Philippines and Japan.
 Petitioners wanted the Court to render judgment, compelling the Executive
Department to espouse their claims for official apology and other forms of
reparations against Japan before the International Court of Justice and other
international tribunals.
 On April 28, 2010, the Court rendered judgment dismissing petitioners’
action. Justice Mariano C. del Castillo wrote the decision for the Court. The
Court essentially gave two reasons for its decision: it cannot grant the
petition because, first, the Executive Department has the exclusive
prerogative under the Constitution and the law to determine whether to
espouse petitioners’ claim against Japan; and, second, the Philippines is not
under any obligation in international law to espouse their claims.
 On June 9, 2010, petitioners filed a motion for reconsideration of the Court’s
decision. More than a month later on July 18, 2010, counsel for petitioners,
Atty. Herminio Harry Roque, Jr., announced in his online blog that his
clients would file a supplemental petition "detailing plagiarism committed
by the court" under the second reason it gave for dismissing the petition
and that "these stolen passages were also twisted to support the court’s

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 erroneous conclusions that the Filipino comfort women of World War Two
have no further legal remedies."
 On July 19, 2010, petitioners filed the supplemental motion for
reconsideration that Atty. Roque announced. It accused Justice Del Castillo
of "manifest intellectual theft and outright plagiarism" when he wrote the
decision for the Court and of "twisting the true intents of the plagiarized
sources … to suit the arguments of the assailed Judgment."
 They charged Justice Del Castillo of copying without acknowledgement
certain passages from three foreign articles:
 A Fiduciary Theory of Jus Cogens by Evan J. Criddle and Evan Fox-
Descent, Yale Journal of International Law (2009);
 Breaking the Silence: Rape as an International Crime by Mark Ellis,
Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law (2006); and
 Enforcing Erga Omnes Obligations by Christian J. Tams, Cambridge
University Press (2005).

 Issues
 Whether or not, in writing the opinion for the Court in the Vinuya case,
Justice Del Castillo plagiarized the published works of authors Tams,
Criddle-Descent, and Ellis.
 Whether or not Justice Del Castillo twisted the works of these authors to
make it appear that such works supported the Court’s position in the
Vinuya decision.

 The Passages from Tams

 Petitioners point out that the Vinuya decision lifted passages from Tams’
book, Enforcing Erga Omnes Obligations in International Law (2006) and
used them in Footnote 69 with what the author thought was a mere generic
reference. But, although Tams himself may have believed that the
footnoting in this case was not "an appropriate form of referencing,” he and
petitioners cannot deny that the decision did attribute the source or sources
of such passages.
 Justice Del Castillo did not pass off Tams’ work as his own. The Justice
primarily attributed the ideas embodied in the passages to Bruno Simma,
whom Tams himself credited for them. Still, Footnote 69 mentioned, apart
from Simma, Tams’ article as another source of those ideas.
 The Court believes that whether or not the footnote is sufficiently detailed,
so as to satisfy the footnoting standards of counsel for petitioners is not an
ethical matter but one concerning clarity of writing.
 The statement "See Tams, Enforcing Obligations Erga Omnes in
International Law (2005)" in the Vinuya decision is an attribution no matter
if Tams thought that it gave him somewhat less credit than he deserved.

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 Such attribution altogether negates the idea that Justice Del Castillo passed
off the challenged passages as his own

 The Passages from Ellis and Criddle-Descent

 Petitioners also attack the Court’s decision for lifting and using as footnotes,
without attribution to the author, passages from the published work of
Ellis. The Court made the following statement on page 27 of its decision,
marked with Footnote 65 at the end:
 We fully agree that rape, sexual slavery, torture, and sexual violence
are morally reprehensible as well as legally prohibited under
contemporary international law. 65 xxx
 Footnote 65 appears down the bottom of the page. Since the lengthy
passages in that footnote came almost verbatim from Ellis’ article, such
passages ought to have been introduced by an acknowledgement that they
are from that article.
 Petitioners also point out that at least eight more sentences and their
accompanying footnotes appear in text on the Vinuya decision.
 The Vinuya decision lifted the said content, including their footnotes, from
Criddle-Descent’s article, A Fiduciary Theory of Jus Cogens. Criddle-
Descent’s footnotes were carried into the Vinuya decision’s own footnotes
but no attributions were made to the two authors in those footnotes

 The Explanation
 Unless amply explained, the above lifting from the works of Ellis and
Criddle-Descent could be construed as plagiarism. But one of Justice Del
Castillo’s researchers, a court-employed attorney, explained how she
accidentally deleted the attributions, originally planted in the beginning
drafts of her report to him, which report eventually became the working
draft of the decision. She said that, for most parts, she did her research
electronically.
 She electronically "cut" relevant materials from books and journals in the
website and "pasted" these to a "main manuscript" in her computer that
contained the issues for discussion in her proposed report to the Justice. She
used the Microsoft Word program. Later, after she decided on the general
shape that her report would take, she began pruning from that manuscript
those materials that did not fit, changing the positions in the general scheme
of those that remained, and adding and deleting paragraphs, sentences, and
words as her continuing discussions with Justice Del Castillo, her chief
editor, demanded.

 First Finding

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  The Court adopts the Committee’s finding that the researcher’s explanation
regarding the accidental removal of proper attributions to the three authors
is credible. Given the operational properties of the Microsoft program in
use by the Court, the accidental decapitation of attributions to sources of
research materials is not remote.
 The mistake of Justice Del Castillo’s researcher is that, after the Justice had
decided what texts, passages, and citations were to be retained including
those from Criddle-Descent and Ellis, and when she was already cleaning
up her work and deleting all subject tags, she unintentionally deleted the
footnotes that went with such tags—with disastrous effect.
 The researcher deleted the subject tags and, accidentally, their
accompanying footnotes that served as reminder of the sources of the lifted
passages.
 Neither Justice Del Castillo nor his researcher had a motive or reason for
omitting attribution for the lifted passages to Criddle-Descent or to Ellis.
 It did not make sense to intentionally omit attribution to these authors
when the decision cites an abundance of other sources. Citing these authors
as the sources of the lifted passages would enhance rather than diminish
their informative value. Both Justice Del Castillo and his researcher gain
nothing from the omission. Thus, the failure to mention the works of
Criddle-Decent and Ellis was unquestionably due to inadvertence or pure
oversight.

 Second Finding
 The Court also adopts the Committee’s finding that the omission of
attributions to Criddle-Descent and Ellis did not bring about an impression
that Justice Del Castillo himself created the passages that he lifted from their
published articles. That he merely got those passages from others remains
self-evident, despite the accidental deletion. The fact is that he still imputed
the passages to the sources from which Criddle-Descent and Ellis borrowed
them in the first place.

 Third Finding
 Petitioners allege that the decision twisted the passages from Tams,
Criddle-Descent, and Ellis. The Court adopts the Committee’s finding that
this is not so.
 Since the attributions to Criddle-Descent and Ellis were accidentally
deleted, it is impossible for any person reading the decision to connect the
same to the works of those authors as to conclude that in writing the
decision Justice Del Castillo "twisted" their intended messages.
 The lifted passages provided mere background facts that established the
state of international law at various stages of its development. These are

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 neutral data that could support conflicting theories regarding whether or
not the judiciary has the power today to order the Executive Department to
sue another country or whether the duty to prosecute violators of
international crimes has attained the status of jus cogens.

 No Misconduct
 On occasions judges and justices have mistakenly cited the wrong sources,
failed to use quotation marks, inadvertently omitted necessary information
from footnotes or endnotes. But these do not, in every case, amount to
misconduct. Only errors that are tainted with fraud, corruption, or malice
are subject of disciplinary action

 No Inexcusable Negligence
 Finally, petitioners assert that, even if they were to concede that the
omission was the result of plain error, Justice Del Castillo is nonetheless
guilty of gross inexcusable negligence. They point out that he has full
control and supervision over his researcher and should not have
surrendered the writing of the decision to the latter.
 But this assumes that Justice Del Castillo abdicated the writing of the
Vinuya decision to his researcher. As his researcher testified, the Justice set
the direction that the research and study were to take by discussing the
issues with her, setting forth his position on those issues, and reviewing
and commenting on the study that she was putting together until he was
completely satisfied with it. In every sense, Justice Del Castillo was in
control of the writing of the report to the Court, which report eventually
became the basis for the decision, and determined its final outcome.

 Dissenting Opinion of Former CJ Sereno

 The unfortunate ruling of the majority Decision that no plagiarism was
committed stems from its failure to distinguish between the determination
of the objective, factual existence of plagiarism in the Vinuya decision and
the determination of the liability that results from a finding of plagiarism.
Specifically, it made "malicious intent", which heretofore had not been
relevant to a finding of plagiarism, an essential element.
 It has also undermined the protection of copyrighted work by making
available to plagiarists "lack of malicious intent" as a defense to a charge of
violation of copy or economic rights of the copyright owner committed
through lack of attribution.

 Plagiarism and Judicial Plagiarism

 Plagiarism is an act that does not depend merely on the nature of the object,
i.e. what is plagiarized, but also hinges on the process, i.e. what has been

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 done to the object. The elements of this process are the act of copying the
plagiarized work and the subsequent omission in failing to attribute the
work to its author.
 Plagiarism thus does not consist solely of using the work of others in one's
own work, but of the former in conjunction with the failure to attribute said
work to its rightful owner and thereby, as in the case of written work,
misrepresenting the work of another as one's own. As the work is another's
and used without attribution, the plagiarist derives the benefit of use from
the plagiarized work without expending the requisite effort for the same ─
at a cost (as in the concept of "opportunity cost") to its author who could
otherwise have gained credit for the work and whatever compensation for
its use is deemed appropriate and necessary.
 If the question of plagiarism, then, turns on a failure of attribution, judicial
plagiarism in the case at bar "arises when judges author opinions that
employ materials from copyrighted sources such as law journals or books,
but neglect to give credit to the author.”
 Doing so effectively implies the staking of a claim on the copied work as
the judge's own. Note that there is no requirement of extent of copying or a
minimum number of instances of unattributed usage for an act to be
considered a plagiarist act, nor is the intent to deceive or to copy without
attribution a prerequisite of plagiarism.
 Plagiarism may be done "through negligence or recklessness without intent
to deceive.
 The imposition of sanctions for acts of judicial plagiarism, however, is not
as clear-cut.
 In the case of judicial plagiarism, it is entirely possible for judges to have
violated the rules against plagiarism out of ignorance or from the sheer fact that in
order to cope with their caseloads, they have to rely on researchers for part of the
work. That would have been a very interesting argument to consider. But
ignorance is not pleaded here, nor is the inability to supervise a legal researcher
pleaded to escape liability on the part of the ponente. Rather, the defense was that
no plagiarism existed. This conclusion however is unacceptable for the reasons
stated above.

 A.M. No. 10-7-17-SC

February 8, 2011

 Petitioners Isabelita C. Vinuya, et al., all members of the Malaya Lolas

Organization, seek reconsideration of the decision of the Court dated
October 12, 2010 that dismissed their charges of plagiarism, twisting of cited
materials, and gross neglect against Justice Mariano Del Castillo in

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 connection with the decision he wrote for the Court in G.R. No. 162230,
entitled Vinuya v. Romulo.
 Mainly, petitioners claim that the Court has by its decision legalized or
approved of the commission of plagiarism in the Philippines.
 Plagiarism, a term not defined by statute, has a popular or common
definition. To plagiarize, says Webster, is "to steal and pass off as one’s
own" the ideas or words of another. Stealing implies malicious taking.
Black’s Law Dictionary, the world’s leading English law dictionary quoted
by the Court in its decision, defines plagiarism as the "deliberate and
knowing presentation of another person's original ideas or creative
expressions as one’s own."2 The presentation of another person’s ideas as
one’s own must be deliberate or premeditated—a taking with ill intent
 Decisions of courts are not written to earn merit, accolade, or prize as an
original piece of work or art. Deciding disputes is a service rendered by the
government for the public good. Judges issue decisions to resolve everyday
conflicts involving people of flesh and blood who ache for speedy justice or
juridical beings which have rights and obligations in law that need to be
protected. The interest of society in written decisions is not that they are
originally crafted but that they are fair and correct in the context of the
particular disputes involved. Justice, not originality, form, and style, is the
object of every decision of a court of law.
 There is a basic reason for individual judges of whatever level of courts,
including the Supreme Court, not to use original or unique language when
reinstating the laws involved in the cases they decide. Their duty is to apply
the laws as these are written. But laws include, under the doctrine of stare
decisis, judicial interpretations of such laws as are applied to specific
situations. Under this doctrine, Courts are "to stand by precedent and not
to disturb settled point." Once the Court has "laid down a principle of law
as applicable to a certain state of facts, it will adhere to that principle, and
apply it to all future cases, where facts are substantially the same; regardless
of whether the parties or property are the same."
 Because judicial precedents are not always clearly delineated, they are quite
often entangled in apparent inconsistencies or even in contradictions,
prompting experts in the law to build up regarding such matters a large
body of commentaries or annotations that, in themselves, often become part
of legal writings upon which lawyers and judges draw materials for their
theories or solutions in particular cases. And, because of the need to be
precise and correct, judges and practitioners alike, by practice and tradition,
usually lift passages from such precedents and writings, at times omitting,
without malicious intent, attributions to the originators.
 The tendency to copy in law is readily explicable. In law accuracy of words
is everything. Legal disputes often centre round the way in which

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 obligations have been expressed in legal documents and how the facts of
the real world fit the meaning of the words in which the obligation is
contained. This, in conjunction with the risk-aversion of lawyers means that
refuge will often be sought in articulations that have been tried and tested.
In a sense therefore the community of lawyers have together contributed to
this body of knowledge, language, and expression which is common
property and may be utilized, developed and bettered by anyone.

 Rule 10 of the Code of Professional Responsibility

 CANON 10 - A LAWYER OWES CANDOR, FAIRNESS AND GOOD FAITH TO
THE COURT.
 Rule 10.01 - A lawyer shall not do any falsehood, nor consent to the doing
of any in Court; nor shall he mislead, or allow the Court to be misled by any
artifice.Rule 10.02 - A lawyer shall not knowingly misquote or misrepresent the
contents of a paper, the language or the argument of opposing counsel, or the text
of a decision or authority, or knowingly cite as law a provision already rendered
inoperative by repeal or amendment, or assert as a fact that which has not been
proved.

 SOURCES
 What is Plagiarism? http://www.plagiarism.org
 Plagiarism.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academe/guidance/skills/plagiarism
 Plagiarism. https://plagiarism.duke.edu
 5 ways to avoid plagiarism by Carl Coleman http://blog.law.shu.edu
 Harvey, Gordon. Writing with Sources
 Green, Stuart. Plagiarism, Norms, and the Limits of the Law. 54 Hastings
L.J.
 Dursht, James. Judicial Plagiarism: It may be fair but is it ethical? 18
Cardozo L. Rev. 1233

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