The Bangus Ultimatum

Graduated from law school yesterday. I am currently soaking on a sweet mixture of relief and happiness. Yes, there will be the dread of the impending Bar Exams, but today, at this point - I’m just glad that I got my law degree and that I’m not going back to a classroom in Malcolm Hall. There will be time enough to miss that later.

A particular innovation for this year’s commencement ceremonies is that one student, regardless of her academic standing, can volunteer and be randomly drawn to speak a “message of appreciation”. I found it too tempting to pass on the opportunity to poke a couple of eyes, so I volunteered. I wasn’t picked. The honor went to Kiko de Guzman, one of my blockmates, and (I would hope) a future environmental lawyer. I think he was perfect for the job, and his extemporaneous(?) speech was quirky and a singular episode of er…”redistributive justice”.

Nerd that I am, I prepared a written speech the night before, just in case I would be drawn. Yesterday was the first anniversary of Jonas Burgos’ disappearance, and I wanted to tie it up with one of the many things I ought to be thankful to law school for - a renewed relationship with memory. Here’s the text of my speech. In a universe parallel to ours, I read this before the J.D. graduates of 2008:

One of the best gifts the law school has given me is a renewed relationship with memory. It is something many of you might relate to. Perhaps out of fear, or perhaps out of necessity, we have trained ourselves to push the boundaries of what ought to be remembered.

Our minds are cramped with rules, and rule-making rules, the background and minutiae that, woven together, form the meshwork of the law. Somewhere, hidden in the recesses of your wonderful brains is the idea of a horse named Windblown, and how running your fingers at the back of his ear could relate to unilateral obligations. Somewhere there is the time-honored definition of administrative law from Kenneth Culp Davis. Somewhere there is the notion that the mere possession of kakawati leaves, taken alone, cannot possibly amount to probable cause that will justify warrant-less arrest. Perhaps some of you remember a dozen disputable presumptions, which you have been forced to absorb through rote memorization. I could go on and on.

As precious as all these tidbits are, what I most treasure from my experience as a law student is not the passive assimilation of provisions, but being taught of the notion of the law as a continuing conversation. Hence, our professors, either through gentle nudges or violent kicks, have always invited us to ask – WHY?

Why, for example, did the Constitution consistently favor a policy of public disclosure and openness? Why would the Court, in a case involving the sheerest, most naked assertion of “executive privilege” turn its back on that policy? When the Court rules with finality, fallible as it may be – ordinary law students will take in the ratio decidendi as gospel, find a way to harmonize it, or live with the apparent anomaly. A U.P. law student will study the ruling and absorb it, “for purposes of the bar” – but the question will continue to trouble her - Why? Why? Why?

Because part of our memory is not just the law as it is, but the law as it should be. It is a terrible burden, and a wonderful gift. That lesson will help us make or break this country, the way our predecessors from this institution have been doing for generations. We must remember these lessons well; plant them firmly in our memory – even when we become lawyers, politicians, or justices of the Supreme Court. We should never forget to ask why.

I know your brains are already filled to the brim with legal knowledge, and the situation will be worse once you start reviewing for the bar - but I beg you to commit to memory, no matter how partial, those who have died or disappeared under this, the worse human-rights crisis since the Marcos dictatorship. Remember their names. Or at least, what they fought for. These are people, who, like us, have asked why.

We live in the age of the writ of amparo. It should cause us some alarm that Asia’s first republic can find analogies with the military juntas of Latin America. Unfortunately, oppression and corruption respect no boundaries, and the continuing struggle for liberation, by necessity, is universal. So as much as we borrow the legal remedy, we might as well borrow this quotation – often repeated in those parts of the world as they fought, and continue to fight:

There can be no democracy, without justice. No justice, without truth. No truth, without memory.

Let us never, ever, forget. Thank you very much.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 3:23 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.