The Bangus Ultimatum

So over the holidays, Dad asked me which TV lawyer I’m turning into, perhaps as a way of checking in on my moral health. Is it Alan Shore, the rotten lawyer with a golden heart from Boston Legal? Or maybe cutthroat prosecutor Sebastian Stark.

My official response was that these shows are so far removed from actual practice that they cannot be trusted as accurate reference points for behavior.

Still, I have to admit that it could be useful to be able to step into these characters, if only to set aside one’s self – have that confidence-building out of body experience.

But which fictional lawyer would be right for me?

If I ever become a lawyer and would need to add a touch of theatricality to my practice, my vote is for Romo Lampkin, the “civil rights” lawyer from Battlestar Galactica. Okay, so he is an opportunistic, double-dealing, kleptomaniac who just might be crazy (he carries his dead wife’s cat in a gym bag wherever he goes). But look closer and you can see some virtues shining through the vices:

• Solid Advocacy – the guy’s willing to defend even the most vilified man in the galaxy, endangering his own life in the process, all for the price of a room with a window. That is a pretty admirable exercise of the advocacy function, and shows a deep-seated respect for fundamental rights.

• A Legal Realist – Lampkin does not view law and adjudication as cold procedure based on pure logic and immutable rules, but as a dynamic process that is partially constrained by politics and psychology.

• Capacity for Abstraction/Lateral Thinking (?) – Romo also has the tendency to compress his legal experience into “legal dynamics” that just cuts deep into truth, which really hints at a brilliant noggin’: “Lampkin’s First Rule of Legal Dynamics: When an irresistible force meets a movable object, stand aside and wait for the class action suit.”

Er. That’s all I can think of right now (I never claimed that he had a lot of good points). So yes, in the future, if I ever become a lawyer and manage to squeeze myself back into civil rights litigation – there will be no Earth-bound exemplar for me. Romo’s The Man.

I’ve always thought that an EDSA-style insurrection was a great hack. Gather a sufficient number of people (usually pissed), and there is art and politics and rage and religion, and with some luck, actual change. It can be beautifully executed, distributed intelligence and diverse agendas converging to achieve  shockingly fast political transitions, all with relatively no violence. I have heard my mom talk about Version 1.0, and I was there for Dos.

I’m not sure if I have it in me to go to another.

As beautiful and as enticing as it is, an “EDSA” (I think Makati is the place to be right now) is still a hack – a temporary solution. It is a well-placed application of mass and motion, like nudging a pinball machine with your hips. It’s sexy and exciting as hell, but like any hack, can have unexpected, unintended consequences. Case in point: today’s rally would probably be joined by Erap Estrada, recently convicted of plunder (later pardoned by GMA). Didn’t we already get rid of this sleazebag years ago? Aren’t we supposed to be raging about the kind of corruption that makes Erap free to join rallies? And don’t get me started with Joe “Moral Revolution”* De Venecia within the ranks of the protesters. I’m beginning to think we’ve arrived at the planet of the apes, where the apes ride on horseback and the humans are scurrying like vermin, and the whole world is upside down. Can we really build our futures on such paradoxes?

Maybe I’m just getting old, but  really, I’ve had enough of this shit. I want something more elegant, more lasting.

* Smirk

The freedom of association is often summoned and repeated like mantra whenever one begins to talk of regulation concerning fraternities. It’s as if mentioning it alone is enough to end all debate and render these organizations untouchable.

My problem with the whole freedom-of-association routine is that there are at least two meanings of the right, and people conveniently confuse and conflate these meanings to muddy up the debate.

You can view the freedom of association as protecting those acts that are constitutive of “association” – the carving out of exclusive times and spaces, the appropriation of collective signs and names, simply hanging out and communicating. This is actually an aspect of the right to privacy – the right to manage and be autonomous about your relationships. As an aspect of personal liberty, it is not subject to regulation without compelling state interest, so the bar for messing with this one is set pretty high.

And then there’s the public, “expressive” meaning of the freedom of association – shaped by the intersection of the rights to free speech, assembly, and to form unions and organizations not contrary to law.

These two meanings of the right to association serve different ends, and the scope of protection (and the extent of permissible regulation) would have to be read in the context of those ends. How exactly do you “ban” or “abolish” those acts that are constitutive of association in its private aspect?

But association in its public aspect is another thing. It is deeply correlated with values of free speech, assembly, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Values that are not necessarily affected by a selective and narrowly-drawn regulation of fraternities.

I promised a friend I’ll blog about this, so here goes.

Ang Ladlad, a network of LGBT organizations, registered in the COMELEC last Wednesday so they can run for Congress under the party-list system.

There has always been a lack of informed political discourse on gender issues in the Philippines, and that Isagani Cruz piece shows just how ignorance and bigotry have taken hold at the core of our institutions. The law continues to speak with the voice of an old, male, straight, upper class mestizo. For someone who continues to look to constitutional ideas, this is a profound tragedy. The true limits of freedom can be found in who we choose to marginalize. If we continue to deny rights to a large number of human beings based only on gender or on the way they structured their private relationships, then what freedom we claim to have will be tainted by inauthenticity.

Help change the voice of the law. Vote for Ang Ladlad!

So a group of students campaigning for real reforms meet GMA. They talk to her, a fancy declaration is signed, and then they go, heading off down to Malacañang’s corridors. GMA starts looking for her pen. She can’t find it. She calls in Raul “Collateral Damage” Gonzalez, the Secretary of Justice. “Go after the delegation, and find out which one took my pen,” she says. Gonzalez scuttles off down the corridor. Five minutes later GMA finds her pen under a pile of papers. He calls Gonzalez—”Look, I’ve found my pen.” “It’s too late,” Gonzalez says, “half the delegation admitted they took your pen, and the other half died during questioning.”

Just to remind you that we are under the most violent and militaristic regime since Marcos. (Shamelessly ripped off from BoingBoing)

When I was a law freshman (1L), I’d take the Supreme Court pronouncements in Criminal Law cases like gospel. Nevermind the background in empirical research. If the SC says that positive identification by an eyewitness is paramount and that a barrio lass crying rape can’t possibly lie, then who was I to argue?

I’m taking Evidence this Summer. Somehow, the High Tribunal’s hokey psychology and laughable stereotypes don’t buy it for me. Blame it on the CSI Effect. I expect better forensics and far more rigorous arguments to surmount the presumption of innocence. I’m reading the cases right now. Convictions based on lone witnesses . No object evidence to speak of. � I� and my classmates can’t help but think that things have gone horribly horribly wrong.

I’m hoping that newer batches of lawyers (future judges and justices), would expect more and think better. Courts have to be dragged, kicking� and screaming if need be, into the 21st Century.

�

(Statement of the Jose P. Laurel Constitutional Law Society)

More than three decades ago, then President Ferdinand Marcos issued Proclamation No. 1081, suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and placing the country under martial law. The events of the fifteen years that followed have left their indelible mark on all Filipinos, even those who, at the time, were too young to understand what it all meant.

Three days ago, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Presidential Proclamation 1017, and while she stopped short of suspending the privilege of the writ and declaring martial law, the events that followed her Proclamation shadow the acts of the former dictator.

It is the firm belief of the Jose P. Laurel Constitutional Law Society that Proclamation 1017 is a form of undeclared martial law that allows Gloria Arroyo to effectively skirt public accountability.

As is clear to anyone who bothers to compare the two issuances, the language of 1017 is, almost verbatim, the language of 1081. Although both are anchored on provisions of the Constitution, both have been used to legitimize actions that won’t take a law student to know run counter to the values of free speech and assembly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in Article III. Ostensibly pursuant to an authority granted to her by law, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has sanctioned the aggressive nature in which the government has responded to peaceful assemblies of oppositors to Arroyo’s administration, the warrantless arrest of those perceived to be threats to national security, express “appeals�? by Malacañang and the National Telecommunications Commission to the media to refrain from airing events that might incite sedition or rebellion, and concurrent directives to cancel media licenses and raid offices of newspapers who prove recalcitrant.

By refraining from using the words “suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus�? and persistently insisting that nothing in the Proclamation talks of martial law, Arroyo avoids the four checks contained in Sec. 18, Article VII, namely: 1) the 60-day limit on the effectivity of any proclamation suspending the writ or declaring martial law; 2) her obligation to report, within 48 hours, to Congress on the reason for such an action; 3) the power of Congress to revoke the suspension or proclamation; and 4) the power of the Supreme Court to review, upon petition by any citizen, the sufficiency of the factual bases of the proclamation or suspension.

More than anything else, the 1987 Constitution was a sweeping reaction to the events of the 1970s, and it was the intent of the framers that the fundamental law guarantee that the outrages committed under the Marcos dictatorship would never again be permitted to occur.

The Constitution expressly states that even in a state of martial law, the rights protected under its aegis cannot be suspended. No matter what has or not been inscribed in Proclamation 1017, the fact remains that freedoms fought for by generations of Filipinos who came before us are being violently wrested out of our hands by a Chief Executive who refuses to accept that the true power in this country lies not in the officials who hold public office, but in the people whose vote put them there.

We call on all students of the U.P. College of Law to stand with us by affixing your signature to this statement. Let our voices be heard.