CJ Sereno breaks new ground

Being first, earning recognition for her accomplishments, and setting records are things Maria Lourdes “Meilou” Sereno must be so used to by now. And nothing could be bigger than her being named the Philippines’ first woman Chief Justice, and, according to the Supreme Court website, the second youngest to be so named to the post, and the second longest serving “Chief” when she steps down in 2030, after an 18-year term.

As Chief Justice, she will span the terms of four presidents, and will be given an historic, epoch-creating opportunity not just to institute reforms in the country’s highest judicial body and the entire judiciary, but also to set legal precedents and “create” new laws—or ways of interpreting laws.

But most exciting of all is the fact that our new CJ has been given the chance to create a more gender-fair, gender-aware and less sexist judiciary—if she puts her mind and energies to it. Of course, her gender does not obligate her in any way to take up feminist causes, or to make the law more accessible and fairer to women. But her being a woman should give her a unique insight into the gender biases built into many of our laws, and insight as well into how old-fashioned, unreconstructed male privileging seeps into many judicial decisions.

A recent global study of UN Women noted that while there are many laws which enshrine equality before the law of men and women, inequitable access to justice, including unfair treatment by police and prosecutors and personal biases of (mostly male) judges and justices, remains a formidable barrier. As Chief Justice, Sereno has the chance to at least make a dent on that barrier.

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Her life story gives us many reasons to be optimistic. The accolades for her, many of them coming from her batch mates and other awardees of The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service or TOWNS (Sereno was an awardee in 1998, recognized for her expertise in international law), assure us not just of her competence and abilities but also of her commitment to judicial and legal reform.

The daughter of a public school teacher, she is a product of the public school system, save for a college stint in Ateneo de Manila University, where, with the help of a scholarship, she earned an economics degree, after which she went on to pursue law studies. The Supreme Court website notes that after her graduation (as valedictorian) from the University of the Philippines College of Law, she joined the largest private law firm in the country but “opted to leave the law firm in 1986 [to] spend more time with her two young children and her husband.”

Noteworthy is the special mention in her write-up that “access to justice is one of [her] centerpiece advocacies.”

We are all familiar, of course, with her dissenting opinions that not only contradicted the views of the majority of the Arroyo-appointed justices but were also models of clarity and common sense, logic and legal scholarship. So overall, I am extremely optimistic about the appointment of CJ Sereno, and excited about the changes and reforms we will witness in the 18 years to come.

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Any woman, while being raped, legitimately, that is, need only think that she doesn’t want to get pregnant (or violated) and her body will “conspire” against the rapist. No matter how hard he tries to penetrate the victim and deposit his seed in her, according to this lame-brained theory, her sexual orifices will close up and her reproductive tract will simply repel his unwanted sperm.

This is “Sexuality 101” from Rep. Todd Akin, who is seeking a seat in the US Senate as a Republican from Missouri.

Of course, the rest of the Republican poo-bahs seeking to win American women over to their side in the coming US elections have distanced themselves from Akin. They have even asked him to give up his senatorial ambitions. But the absurdity of his views and his insistence on airing them not only say a lot about his corrupt thinking but also echo a lot of what the rest of the Republican ticket have been saying in public.

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New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has a graphic way of rephrasing Akin’s theory. “In asserting that women have the superpower to repel rape sperm, Akin ratcheted up the old chauvinist argument that gals who wear miniskirts and high-heels are ‘asking’ for rape,” says Dowd. “Now women who don’t have the presence of mind to conjure up a tubal spasm, a drone hormone, a magic spermicidal secretion or mere willpower to block conception during rape are ‘asking’ for a baby.”

Dowd quotes Dr. Paul Blumenthal, professor of obstetrics and gynecology with the Stanford Program for International Reproductive Education and Services, who says (wryly, I imagine) that “the biological facts are perhaps inconvenient, but whether the egg meets the sperm is a matter of luck or prevention. If wishing that ‘I won’t get pregnant right now’ made it so, we wouldn’t need contraceptives.”

Well, maybe Akin had a talk earlier with our very own Sen. Tito Sotto, that distinguished alumnus of Wanbol University, who apparently believes that previous contraceptive use could lead not just to pregnancy but even to heart failure in the five-month-old infant born of that conception.

Let’s hear it one more time from Dr. Blumenthal, who is “alarmed” that Akin is a member of the US House committee on science, space and technology. “What is very disturbing to me is that people like [him] who have postulated this secret mechanism for avoiding pregnancy have developed their own make-believe world of science based on entirely self-serving beliefs of convenience or just ignorance. I don’t think we want these people to be responsible for the lives of others.”