Rationa Insanity
By Bryan Argos

The law according to me

The other night, I was at a bar. Just across my table was another table with four drunken lawyers. While I was contemplating on how to get home in the pouring rain, I could not help but listen to their conversations. They were talking about how to get around the law and entitle a certain “mistress” claim to the properties of a dead person whose legal wife rabidly fights to claim all of what her husband left her.

There were logical arguments thrown here and there as well as legal terms shot in the alcohol intoxicated air. While listening to their conversations it suddenly occurred to me that lawyers are merely pawns in the greater issue that is the Philippine constitution. What I am driving at here is the problem of ordinary civilians usually complaining of how their legal matters are handled by their lawyers.

In the three years I spent to finish my masters at the University of the Philippines – Open University in UP-Los Baños, I amassed a great lump of knowledge of the evolution of the Philippine Administrative system. It is this body of fact that I used to decipher how lawyers really work in this country.

Later that evening I came to the conclusion that lawyers are merely instruments of the law, and it is up to them to use the law to the advantage of their clients. Hence, it is their knowledge of the law that makes them powerful, and it is also their ignorance of the same law that makes them weak. In essence, it is not knowledge of the law itself that makes lawyers what they are, it's how well they have mastered it to be able to go around or over it and make something unlawful seem lawful. Now, if we consider this possibility, we can easily conclude that the law of the land has many loopholes; it is not water tight or air tight because otherwise, nobody can go around or over it, no matter how brilliant a lawyer is. The only reason why lawyers often find a way around or over a certain provision is because many provisions are ambiguous to the extent that numerous interpretations can be attached to them.

I remember poetry in this context. If I were to compare the law to poetry, poetry would prove to be more accurate in terms of interpretation because poetry tries to shed off ambiguity to make room for concrete images that would direct the reader to an almost uniform interpretation of a suggestive art form. This is very disheartening to know of our law, because above all, it should be unambiguous; allowing only interpretation directed towards the truthful right, and the greater good – sommum bonum. If our law allows lawyers to use it in favor of a guilty client, then there is something terribly wrong with the basis of the profession.

Now, going back to history, we will notice that the law of the land has gone through many a metamorphosis; dating back to the time of the first republic under Aguinaldo to the present administration under PGMA. Among the most vital of the evolutionary milestones of our constitution are the Tejeros Convention, the Martial Law Period, and the EDSA Revolution. These three events shaped the law of the land, and in turn, the Philippine Administrative System into what it is now. Consequently, laws are passed in the legislative branch of government adding to the growing body of ambiguity which is the basis for the law profession. Undeniably, we can conclude that it is not really the brilliance of our lawyers that make them great, but the putty that is the Philippine Constitution that they can shape and mold into what they want it to be.

What then can we do to ensure that justice is served righteously (such would even be an irrelevant question on justice because there can be no wrongful justice, there is only justice, and where justice may seem wrong, justice has not been served)? The ambitious solution to this would be to strike down the law and come up with a new and better improved version of it; easier said than done. On my part, I can simply suggest that our lawyers be guided by their ideals and values in practicing their profession. Justice is not to be questioned, rather, it is the stain that some lawyers give to the law profession that subjects justice to the question of morality – where justice merely becomes the middle ground, and morality and immorality become the definites.

Hopefully, when a new crop of lawyers has emerged, a crop glowing with untainted idealism and faithfulness to the greater good, the mistress, who was wrong in the first place to have had entertained a relationship with a married man, would be left with her cosmetics and none of the dead man's assets that ideally, belong to his wife – all of it. The law does not have a heart – it is blind.

Be rational; be insane, every once in a while!

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