Resist politics of fear, new Baguio lawyers urged
BAGUIO CITY—Stressing that “our people still suffer,” Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen said new Baguio lawyers should not succumb to a “politics of fear” that sows discord and protects the “powerful few.”
Speaking at a testimonial dinner for the 32 latest bar passers of the University of Baguio on Feb. 14, Leonen said all barristers face the lure of “proximity, patronage and influence (of power elites)” that appeal to their ego or their pursuit of grandiose accomplishments.
But because new lawyers join the profession with “fully formed moral instincts,” Leonen said he is confident they “will want to do the right thing [in spite of the fact that doing so] does not always feel safe.”
“You will confront this truth sooner or later: you will see silence rewarded and complicity reframed as pragmatism. You will hear the phrase ‘be reasonable’ used as code to (convince you to) yield when one should resist,” the high court justice warned.
Choosing what is right when speaking for ordinary people “brings discomfort, risk and fear … which has been used to influence the public,” he added.
Fighting for causes
But lawyers provide a voice to a public that needs to resolve life-disruptive problems and who already find difficulty approaching attorneys to fight for their causes, Leonen pointed out.
A cofounder of the alternative law organization Legal and Natural Resources Center, the Baguio-born magistrate cautioned the new lawyers against believing they are the sole instruments for “liberating people.” The job, he said, is to “empower people.”
Major judicial reforms currently unfolding at the high court under its Strategic Plan for Judicial Innovations covering 2022 to 2027 are efforts to make the law more accessible to people, he said, adding that the new set of lawyers would be the first to practice when “digital courts are the norm.”
