Once in a while, we inhale a breath of fresh air that gives hope to our dreary existence. That’s what Associate Justice Marvic Leonen’s speech at the new lawyers’ online oath taking on June 25, 2020 has brought us. As one media organization has reported, the speech “roused an online audience that seemed hungry for a glimmer of hope.” His keynote address to our newly minted lawyers who successfully hurdled the 2019 Bar Examinations was the only glow amid the pandemic of bleak news around us. It rekindled our faith in our judicial system, which has reached its nadir a few days ago with a lower court’s decision on the Rappler case.
Justice Leonen’s address admonished our young barristers not to be complicit in committing injustice. “Your oath to the rule of law is not an oath of surrender to the unjust and oppressive elements of the status quo. It is not license to further marginalize those who are disadvantaged, those who are poor, those who are abused by power and untruths.” He condemned complicity by asking the new lawyers whose idealism is not yet compromised by the corrupt elements in our judicial system “to make the difficult moral and ethical decision, all to placate the status quo. They mistake the public interest with debt of gratitude to the elite and the powerful that continue to provide their wealth and create their careers…” Brave and unvarnished words from an incumbent associate justice of the Supreme Court who is privy to the sinister forces that undermine our rule of law.
Central to the Christian baptismal vows is the commitment to renounce evil and injustice. For instance, in the baptismal vows of the United Methodists, they commit to “renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world… and resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.” In Amos 5:15, we are ordained to “hate evil, love good. Maintain justice in the courts.” This is the heart of the vow of a Christian. To do
otherwise is to be un-Christian.
A man of God should hate injustice and oppression. To hate is not a passive verb; it is not just a lip service. It means taking a strong action against injustice, its source and the evil forces that cause it. As men of law trained in the intricate and complex legal niceties, our new lawyers should be witnesses against injustice. However, it does not call for violence against others, otherwise, they become a party to the very injustice which they have vowed to oppose. Lawyers are made to lead in our struggle for justice. Let every new officer of the court live up to his oath that he “will do no falsehood, nor consent to the doing of any in court; …will not wittingly or willingly promote or sue any groundless, false or unlawful suit, or give any consent to the same….”
As a master of the art of legal advocacy and an acknowledged defender of both the righteous and the not-so-righteous, American lawyer Alan Dershowitz has offered this counsel to the fresh law graduates in his book Letters to A Young Lawyer: “Law is an imperfect profession in which success can rarely be achieved without some sacrifice of principle. Thus all practicing lawyers—and most others in the profession—will necessarily be imperfect, especially in the eyes of young idealists. There is no perfect justice, as there are no absolutes in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it.”
The batch of 2020 lawyers, young idealists as they are, should be on the lookout for and denounce such injustices. They should not remain silent in the face of injustice. Justice Leonen has posited the view that “silence about corruption and abuse of power is not only in itself unjust; our silence when we have the ability to speak is in itself a cause of injustice.”
During this pandemic period where the scourge is Covid-19, our heroes are the medical frontliners who pursue their task unperturbed by the fatal risks that confront them. In our battle against every form of injustice and oppression, the role of lawyers, particularly members of Batch ’20 who have just taken their oath, will be very critical. Justice Leonen advised them as they venture into the legal world, “Be at the frontlines. As a lawyer, resist injustice. Make it your passion to resist injustice.” As a member of the legal profession, as the good justice has pointed out in his talk, “it is tempting to simply exist in the protected comfort of our lives, succumb to the status quo, just get rich, do our thing, and allow our existence to be full of material possessions, but meaningless. But we have a choice. We have the option to discover our courage, live with the discomfort, critically examine our society, and use our profession for a greater purpose that humanity not only survives but thrives with social justice.”
Novo companeros y companeras, the choice is yours!