UP law dean Leonen faces up to his own 'plagiarism' issue

GMANews.TV - Thursday, December 9, 2011

 "If you commit a wrongdoing, you have to acknowledge it
immediately. You don't make excuses for it.“

Thus said University of the Philippines College of Law dean Marvic

M.V.F. Leonen after offering to resign from his post when he was linked by
a lawyers' group to an alleged instance of plagiarism.

Leonen had led a group of 37 UP law school professors who called on

a Supreme Court justice to resign over plagiarism charges. The Supreme
Court instead cleared the magistrate.

Leonen's prompt offer to resign seemed at least partly intended to

present a contrast to the High Court's action.

In an interview on Wednesday night, Leonen acknowledged that he

failed to supply at least two attributions in his 2004 article titled "Weaving
Worldviews: Implications of Constitutional Challenges to the Indigenous
Peoples Rights Act of 1997."
 The materials that Leonen borrowed were from the American law professor
Owen Lynch's dissertation and "friend of the court" brief co-written with Romina
Picolotti. Lynch currently teaches at the UP College of Law as a visiting professor.

Leonen then said that he is ready to face the consequences of inadvertently

leaving out the footnotes that contain the source attributions.

"I had made that mistake. It's an honest mistake but one I should
acknowledge, apologize for, and basically meet the penalty. And I thought that a
huge part of it would be to offer to resign the deanship," said Leonen.

Leonen submitted his resignation letter, dated December 7, to UP Diliman

Chancellor Sergio Cao. In the letter, the law dean owned up to failing "to
acknowledge my sources as I should have.“

"I have always held myself to the highest standards of integrity, and this has
been especially true in my conduct as Dean of the College of Law. My illustrious
predecessors have set the bar and I intend that it should not be lowered," Leonen
said in his letter.

“Thus, to protect this standard, and the reputation of the College and
University, I offer my resignation as Dean of College of Law," he also said.
 The sanctity of marriage as an institution may be open to question as
increasing number of children are either being reared by single parent, or being
forced with a single parent because of non marital childhood. Children may
have an unquestioned right to parental support, be it emotional, psychological
or financial – children of separated parents still have these needs and
separation creates an indeterminable void that may sustain beyond childhood.

Judith (1994) believes that women and men have fundamentally different
behaviors vis-à-vis marriage child bearing and care of children. Women
normally take care of children; take responsibility for them, in spite or despite
their existent or future relationships. Men on the other hand, Judith believes,
have usually relationship with children of partners they are cohabiting with –
this relationship may shear off with partner dissolution. This removal of
paternal link may have severe emotional consequences for younger children.

The quantum and magnitude of effects has been questioned by various

researchers citing lack of evidence or partiality of evidence, yet the negativity of
effects has been acknowledged (Judith, 1994).
Red – Ideas of the writer of the research paper
Blue – Citation (author’s surname /s appears in the text’s discussion)
Violet – Citation (author’s surname/s separated from the paraphrased/summarized note)
 Brem, Saracen, and Gloweth (1999) found out in their study entitled
“Enlivening the Cauuse of Divorce” that the major sources of disagreements
amongst the two partners before divorce are money and child handling ways
and these issues persist after the break – exacerbated by discordant partners
who already could not agree to a single view. This conflict often leads to
disengagement from each other and leaving the poor child’s future in a
vacuum. Growing children are caught midway between parents who can’t take
sides without feeling guilty and end up blaming themselves for inability to
manage parents’ disagreements
Bremm, et. al. (1999) note in their study that boys and girls tend to
behave differently in post divorce single parent scenario. Boys are more
disturbed when father leaves than daughters while daughters similarly
experience distress with addition of a stepfather, as this addition may be
perceived as pseudo loss of mother in terms of attention and time. Again
stepfather addition may surmount to sexual tension for girls in the pubescent
step daughter step father relationship.
 Scientific research confirms the dangers of using phones while on
the road. In 1997 an important study appeared in the New England
Journal of Medicine. The authors, Donald Redelmeier and Robert
Tibshirani, studied 699 volunteers who made their cell phone bills
available in order to confirm the times when they had placed calls. The
participants agreed to report any nonfatal collision in which they were
involved. By comparing the time of a collision with the phone records,
the researchers assessed the dangers of driving while phoning. The
results are unsettling:
We found that using a cellular telephone was associated with a
risk of having a motor vehicle collision that was about about four times
as high as that among the same drivers when they were not using
their cellular telephones. This relative risk is similar to the hazard
associated with driving with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit.
(Eusebio, 2004, p.456)