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Mar15G-1 (Final) Bar Oathtaking Speech

2011 Bar Oathtaking Ceremony March 21, 2012

Upholding the Rule of Law: A Lifelong Challenge

Greetings: - Honorable Chief Justice Renato C. Corona - Colleagues in the Supreme Court and the Judiciary - The members of the 2011 Bar Executive Committee chaired by Justice Roberto Abad - Officials of the Supreme Court and the Judiciary - Our incoming companeros y companeras in the profession - The deans, professors and other members of the academe - Distinguished guests, the proud parents, spouses, and loved ones of our new lawyers - Guests, ladies and gentlemen: Good afternoon.

Once more, we hold today a ceremony that has become an annual ritual for this Court the oathtaking ceremony for our new lawyers. I am sure that this is an occasion that all our new companeros y companeras will enjoy and cherish, as I enjoyed and still cherish my own oathtaking a long time ago. Your oath is the culmination of your labors to prepare yourselves academically to be lawyers, and serves as well as our societys recognition of what you have achieved. Your parents, family, professors and friends will likewise welcome todays event as it evidences the results of their invested energies over the years to help you attain your career dreams. To all of you, let me extend my

Mar15G-1 (Final) Bar Oathtaking Speech

congratulations for your achievement. You have confronted the final tests of competency and, without question, passed them. In behalf of the Court, I welcome you to the ranks of the legal profession.

My congratulations, too, go to the Chairman of the 2011 Bar Executive Committee, Associate Justice Roberto Abad, and the members of the Bar Executive Committee for the successful handling of the 2011 Bar Examinations. They all worked tirelessly and made history by administering the first predominantly multiple-choice exam in our bar examinations. As in any change in life, the process and transition have not been easy and the effectiveness of the results has yet to be accepted by many. Success, however, cannot be gauged through the immediate results that the new exams showed; it can be established only by the individual successes of our 1,913 new brethren in the profession as they engage in the practice of law. I hope that this open question serves as a continuing challenge to our new lawyers. Let me say, too, that passing the bar is not really the hard part of being a lawyer; the real test in fact has only just begun. By passing the bar exam, you merely proved that you have met the standards the Court has set to test your intellectual capacity to be lawyers. You will not really be tested for the other capacities a lawyer must deliver until you meet and contend with the daily grind of law practice whether it be in private practice, in corporations, or in government service. There you will struggle, not only with the theories that you learned in law school, but with the application of these theories in the blood, guts and grime of real life. It is a far different arena where precise knowledge of law is only a start and where the calm and certainty the law school offers will not be with you, many times leaving you alone with only your raw

Mar15G-1 (Final) Bar Oathtaking Speech

courage, prayers and, hopefully, with the thoughts of the oath you took today as your guide. Then you will see what being a lawyer and being a member of the legal profession mean.

On this occasion, let me offer you two basic thoughts essential to your life as a lawyer.

The Law in the Life of a Lawyer.

The first is the concept of law that we, as lawyers, must equip ourselves as primary tool and reason for being. The law did not come to us as ready-made rules plucked from the universal void to govern society. It is the evolved product of our society and the embodiment of our collective experiences our fears and aspirations as a people. It comes to us and I quote:

[As a] great civilizing machinery. It liberates the desire to build and subdues the desire to destroy. And if war can tear us apart, law can unite us out of fear, or love, or reason, or all three. Law is the greatest human invention. All the rest give man mastery over his world. Law gives him mastery over himself.1

This role of law in society gives us lawyers a very unique and essential role in society we exist as professionals for the good of society and we must at all times use the law for this purpose. This is part of the oath we all commonly took and we must put this oath to heart and undertake it with all seriousness. Let us never hesitate in undertaking our role as lawyers; let us all hasten to do our individual shares for the collective good of all.

US President Johnson, Lyndon B., Time, September 24, 1965, p. 48.

Mar15G-1 (Final) Bar Oathtaking Speech

The Rule of Law

A second thought to keep as a mandatory guide is that the practice of law is not a right but a privilege2 that carries with it a host of obligations and responsibilities. We carry these burdens because we belong to the ranks of the privileged few who have been given primary duties by society. Among these duties are the specific tasks to uphold the Constitution, obey the laws of the land and promote respect for law and legal processes, all in the interest of securing for the nation a fair, just and humane society. As lawyers, we see to the administration of the law, but we do this, not as the laws taskmasters, but as societys servants. As the High Court said in one case:3

By swearing the lawyer's oath, an attorney becomes a guardian of truth and the rule of law, and an indispensable instrument in the fair and impartial administration of justice a vital function of democracy, a failure of which is disastrous to society.

The great playwright William Shakespeare expressed this role in his own unique way when he said in the play Henry VI The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers. Thereby, he recognized for posterity that the first thing any aspiring autocrat must do to succeed to power is to kill all the lawyers because they, even in those times, were the most vocal dissenters to oppression and tyranny.

Fighting against tyranny and defending democracy are not, by any measure, easy tasks, for we are not allowed to fight tyranny with the same tools it employs. The oath you took today commands you to fight

2 3

Atty. Alcantara v. Atty. De Vera, A.C. No. 5859, November 23, 2010. Businos v. Ricafort, A.C. No. 4349, December 22, 1997.

Mar15G-1 (Final) Bar Oathtaking Speech

by upholding the rule of law a phrase that has entered the laymans lexicon and consciousness but one that is often misunderstood.

The true essence of the rule of law means a lot more than the opposite of mob rule, although this is a meaning that the phrase readily admits. To be governed by the rule of law means that every person, of whatever rank, class, or condition, is subject to the laws of the land, particularly the Constitution and its underlying principles of its supremacy, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and, most of all, the observance of due process.

The rule of law serves to assure the general populace that before the eyes of the law, they will be treated fairly and with consistency. It also ensures the transparent and even-handed application of the laws, and guarantees all individuals the right to assert and defend their rights before the courts. Most important of all, the rule of law ensures that the states powers are defined and limited by law.4 According to a noted jurist:

No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the Government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it.5

The rule of law recognizes and gives no special treatment to any President, cabinet member, legislator, justice or judge. It recognizes neither the Supreme Court nor the Impeachment Court as a tribunal higher than the other; both must bow to the supremacy of the Constitution, our highest law.
4 5

See World Bank, World Development Report, 1996: From Plan To Market 86 (1996), p. 87. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel F. Miller in United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 (1882).

Mar15G-1 (Final) Bar Oathtaking Speech

This is the guarantee that the rule of law provides for all of us as we collectively labor for a just and democratic society. And this is the reason why lawyers, as administrators of the law and servants of society, must uphold the rule of law and consider this their foremost duty.

I am sure that you are all aware of the challenges that our Chief Justice is currently facing challenges that may have polarized the entire nation. I am not here to tell you which side is right and which side is wrong. I will leave that question to your own judgment as professionals skilled in the law and as aware citizens. But I mention this present case because it significantly involves the law and the rule of law, and as an example of the challenges you may face to undertake your role as lawyers, especially in these times of searing emotions when tempers are running high. It is especially in these highly charged times that we need to look to the law for guidance, for passion must be tempered with reason.

The philosopher Aristotle puts it in this way the law is reason, free from passion. Another formulation can be that the law is beyond passion. The law, as a stabilizing force in society, cannot be subject to the whims and impulses of unbridled passion. Former U.S. President John Quincy Adams, spoke with great exactitude when he said:

The law, in all vicissitudes of government, fluctuations of the passions, or flights of enthusiasm, will preserve a steady undeviating course; it will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations, and wanton tempers of men. On the one hand, it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder, to the clamors of the populace.6
6

Taken from the Legal Papers of John Adams, No. 64, Rex v Wemms.

Mar15G-1 (Final) Bar Oathtaking Speech

You are indeed joining the ranks of lawyers amidst trying times. Unfortunately, your adherence to the rule of law may, and most probably will be, misconstrued as blind and stubborn adherence to the old guard and its antiquated beliefs. But you must not waver in your sworn duty. Abigail Adams, mother of the same former President John Quincy Adams, described these trying times and told her son:

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by the scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities that would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.7

Thus, these are times for challenges that we lawyers should embrace as opportunities for service to society. These are interesting times (to quote an old Chinese curse) that call for all lawyers to fulfill their role and do their duty to society.

Conclusion Let me close this brief address with the following words, uttered in the face of criticism of the legal profession, to remind the public of the lawyers function in our society:

True, we build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do that the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts
7

Letter by Abigail Adams to her son John Quincy Adams dated January 19, 1780.

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we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state. We may not construct the levers, pistons and wheels of society, but we supply the lubrication that makes its even running possible. For the true administration of Justice is the firmest pillar of the state.8

I hope these words resonate within each one of you, and serve to remind you of the duty you accepted upon taking your oath. Let these words settle all doubts in discouraging times when dissonant voices seemingly overwhelm our call for the rule of law. Again, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to all of you, and to your proud parents and loved ones. Thank you and a pleasant afternoon to all.

DAVIS, John W., Special meeting to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Bar of the City of New York, March 16, 1946.

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