honors from UST by due diligence and acuity. What of it?
We do not lack for people who did exceptionally brilliantly in law school, displaying erudition in all matters legal. We do not lack for people who topped the bar exams, along with toppling every bottle in the bar, and went on to found their own prodigious houses, or firms, the kind with red bricks for their façade, or its counterpart in these more tropical parts. We do not lack for people, particularly in both houses of Congress, who can perorate on the legal aspects of an issue and do so at the slightest provocation, or lack of it, loving not just the opportunity for exhibition but the sound of their own voices. We do not lack for law schools. We do not lack for law. We do not lack for lawyers.
What we lack is justice.
What all this law has produced in this country is a tremendous lawlessness. What all these lawyers have produced in this country is tremendous injustice. Even the Western countries of course have formidable houses or firms that pride themselves with their legal acumen, or their ability to win cases, or their ability to keep their clients out of jail, whichever comes first, or more profitably. But on the whole, justice, however imperfect it is, still manages to be the end product of the juridical system. Here, that doesn’t seem to be the case. In practice, law exists in direct opposition to justice. In practice, lawyers exist in direct opposition to philosophers and sages.
We do not lack for lawyers with intellectual abilities, what we lack are lawyers with moral intelligence. We do not lack for judges who can cite no end of legal precedents, what we lack are judges who can grasp no end of social consequences. We do not lack for justices who deserve to have graduated summa cum laude from law schools, what we lack are justices who deserve to pass, never mind with honors, in the school of life.
There are exceptions of course. Ka Pepe Diokno topped the bar and accounting exams in the same year, a feat that hasn’t been equaled, but he spent his life using law (and accounting) to defend the oppressed, to champion the oppressed, to assuage the distressed. He used his talents, in full display academically, to make sure that justice particularly during martial law did not become merely academic.
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