Since 1987 the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) has struggled with the question of whether it should allow two or only one member of Congress to sit in the body. Last month a divided Supreme Court finally ordered the JBC: You can have only one member of Congress. How much of a difference will that make?
Last year, at about this time, close to a thousand law students passed the bar and became lawyers. At the time they did, we were in the thick of the impeachment of Renato Corona. The goings-on in the Senate-turned-impeachment court, in particular the penchant of the lawyers there, current or ex, to obsess on procedure rather than substance, to impress with an ability to quote chapter and verse rather than with a capacity to quest for justice, impelled me to write a column giving a piece of unsolicited advice to the new lawyers.
This refers to the articles titled “Ati Leader in Boracay gunned down” (Inquirer, 2/24/13) and “Dexter Condez: A voice of courage for Ati folk” (Inquirer, 3/2/13).
Since the killing of 13 people at a police-military checkpoint in Atimonan, Quezon, on Jan. 6, not a single day has passed without the media reporting a rising tide of robberies and break-ins into shops and homes in Metro Manila. In the Atimonan carnage, the National Bureau of Investigation has determined that the victims died not as a result of a shootout between the police-military team and a criminal group, but, rather, an extralegal execution by state law enforcement authorities.
Who should go to prison for speaking his mind? In the modern democratic project, the answer is clear: No one. The conviction of social activist Carlos Celdran for the obscure crime of “offending the religious feelings,” then, raises many questions. Is the Philippines a modern democracy? Is freedom of speech a living civic virtue? Are [...]
The insults, revelations, accusations being hurled or insinuated on the Senate floor have riveted public attention, which of course is to be expected, because who can resist all these juicy tidbits after all? But the concentration on the trees should not distract us from what is or has been happening in the forest. Let’s not forget the big picture, please.
Those who’ve written about it are perfectly justified in their outrage. That is Juan Ponce Enrile distributing P1.6 million in bonus to his favorite senators, who are most of them, and “only” P250,000 to his not-very-favorite ones, who are Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Antonio Trillanes, Alan Peter Cayetano and Pia Cayetano.
I want to be a lawyer because, for me, it’s a good way not only to earn a decent living but also to help mankind.
“No master but law, no guide but conscience, no aim but justice.” With this dictum immortalized by the well-revered jurist, nationalist and former Supreme Court Associate Justice Jose Benedicto Luna (JBL) Reyes as theme, thousands of members of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) will converge in Davao City starting Monday for a weeklong series of activities, including the 14th National Convention of Lawyers and the IBP’s 40th founding anniversary.
The year 2012 ended with so much to thank our Almighty God for, but it left behind the lingering question: Why does our Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) keep on approving power rate increases contrary to the intent of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira)?
Way back at the start of the last decade, there was this interesting commercial by PLDT. A young man, who is studying in Manila, calls up his father in his clinic in Iloilo and nervously says he has something to tell him, he hopes he will understand. The father asks if he has a problem. No, he answers, he just wants to shift to Fine Arts. But why?—his father expostulates. He figures he’s not cut out to be a doctor, he replies.
