COMMENTARY: Writing-Speaking-Teaching Law and Academic Freedom

I am not a lawyer. I have never claimed to be one. I do not have to be one. But having studied my way, with earnestness and diligence, through the discipline and earning a doctorate degree in juridical science (and another in philosophy), I am a student of the law, a legal academic.

 

Is that allowed? The more relevant question is: Why should it not be?

Academic freedom is a constitutional guarantee. Any person can engage in the scholarly study of any discipline he chooses, and research, publish and disseminate his scholarly production. I have chosen to study the law. I have chosen to research, publish and teach it. I am guaranteed that right by academic freedom. 

 

For good measure, I am also assured that I can write, publish and teach all who care to listen because of the guarantee of free speech and expression!

 

A lawyer represents others and proffers legal advice in relation to disputes. A legal scholar studies the law as an academic discipline. Sometimes, lawyer and legal scholar will wrestle with the same issue, but one is not necessarily the other!

 

Did I proclaim myself a legal scholar?  No, a community of your peers must accept you as one.  In the time of Chief Justice Andres Narvasa, I was appointed as a professor of the Philippine Judicial Academy. Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Jr. appointed me Chair of its Department of Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy. Justice Ameurfina Melencio Herrera, founding chancellor of the Academy, named me Head of Academic Affairs of PhilJA. 

 

I was sent to Canada for studies in judicial education and was admitted as a Fellow of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute. Recently, I was admitted as a member of the British Society of Legal Scholars. So, no, I did not proclaim myself a legal scholar.

 

Does writing about the law and proffering one's opinions on legal and constitutional issues constitute the practice of law under the so-called Monsod Doctrine? No, it does not.

First things first. Read Monsod. The issue was whether Christian Monsod, A LAWYER, could be deemed to have practiced law to be qualified for COMELEC Chairmanship, when all his life, he was engaged in corporate work? The Supreme Court ruled that since he used his legal knowledge to do corporate work, he was practicing law.

 

When a scholar studies the law as an academic discipline, writes on it, publishes and teaches, he is exercising a scholar's guaranteed right. It's a different matter when it accepts clients, attempts to represent them in court, or draws up legal papers for interested parties. That would be practice of law. I do not need that to make a living. I am blessed with the life of a priest. I am content with the life of a scholar.

 

As for the Graduate School of Law, it is NOT a school of law.  It does not qualify people for the Bar Exams. It has nothing to do with the Bar. It is what people attend when they wish a scholarly approach to the study of law -- after having earned basic degrees. Look up websites of universities offering LLM or higher law degrees abroad: Many of them do not require that enrollees be lawyers. 

 

So, to head a graduate school of law, what is needed is academic qualification, not a license to practice law.

 

That is why I write, publish and teach law. And I shall continue doing so, even when my opinions do not always sit well with all.  It is a bankrupt scholar who writes only to please!

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