Speech of Vice President Jejomar C. Binay during the U.P. College of Law

Centennial Homecoming, Philippine International Convention Center, Pasay City,

11 November 2011, 8 p.m.

The UP College of Law After a Hundred Years

Fellow U.P. Law alumni, friends, ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

This is a very special day for me, for today marks the day the Good Lord and my parents,

Diego Medrano Binay and Lourdes Gatan Cabauatan, gave me life and, therefore, an

opportunity to be of service to our country and people.

The rather propitious coincidence of this date, which puts elevens in a row---like the

jackpot sign in a slot machine---understandably caused such excitement among my

family and staff that they forgot to include this homecoming in my overcrowded 11-11-

11 schedule.

I resolved the matter simply by asking myself this question: if I didnt make it to this homecoming tonight, wouldnt I have to wait another hundred years to make it to the next one?

And so, here I am.

It is but proper that I spend part of this special day with you. For where would I be today

if I had not gone to the U.P. College of Law? Of course, my wife asks the more difficult

question, where would I be today if she did not marry me?

As our college happens to be much older than all of us here, I have to honor its birthday

more than my own. Theres no question of which one takes precedence. For this centennial anniversary allows us, its alumni, to take a measure of what this College has

done for the country, what the nation owes this College, what each one of us owes the

U.P. College of Law, especially those who have been called to serve.

But in looking at the last one hundred years, the first question we should probably ask is

how has the College fared in its public business as a law school?

Those who enter the hallowed grounds of Malcolm Hall are welcomed by the words of

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. which say:

The business of a law school is not sufficiently described when you merely say that it is to teach law or make lawyers. It is to teach law in the grand manner, and to make great

lawyers.

Now, how has our College fared in that mission in the last one hundred years?

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One ready answer is that the College has produced at least four (4) presidents, four (4)

vice presidents, six (6) senate presidents, five (5) speakers of the House of

Representatives, and 12 chief justices of the Supreme Court. In the rolls of the Philippine

Senate, 43 have come from the U.P. College of Law, eight (8) of whom are incumbent

senators. No other law school in the country can match that record.

Not only have our alumni occupied the highest ranks of the three branches of our

government. They have also dominated every layer of public service and private industry.

Wherever there is a challenge to be met, a job to be done, a service to perform ----

whether it be on the bench, in the legislature, the civil service, the academe, NGOs,

public and private corporations, professional organizations, political parties or

revolutionary movements ---you find U.P. Law graduates giving it their best shot.

Wherever the winds of circumstance and opportunity take them, they leave their mark of

excellence on their job.

But let us go back to the rest of what Justice Holmes told the Harvard Law School

Association at the 250th anniversary of Harvard University on November 5, 1886 --- that

a law school does not undertake to teach success, but what it does undertake is to teach

law. You cannot make a student a master by teaching. He added, a student makes himself

a master by aid of his natural gifts.

And Justice Holmes concludes: It is the crowning glory of this law school that it has kindled in many hearts an inextinguishable fire.

According to that dictum, a great law school sets lawyers hearts on fire. And not just any fire, but an inextinguishable fire. An unquenchable fire. You become a kind of eternal

torch for law and justice, as it were.

What Justice Holmes said of his law school then we should be able to say of our College

without any false conceit after a hundred years. And with his tacit consent, we should be

able to adopt his words as our own, and offer our individual testimonies to that

inextinguishable fire which our College has kindled in our hearts. Let me offer you my own.

I have always been an underdog. I began as an underdog and came to U.P. as an

underdog. Born in the most modest and humble of circumstance, I was orphaned at an

early age. But for the kindness and generosity of an uncle, whose life was likewise

simple, I would not have been able to make it through school. In the face of adversity and

deprivation, I resolved early in life to work hard, get a good education, and give every

man his due.

When as a wide-eyed law freshman I finally set foot at the U.P. College of Law as a

working student, I knew I had stayed the course and would have a fighting chance,

whatever the odds. I worked by day so I could study by night. Even small indulgences

like having dinner out or drinks with law classmates I had to minimize.

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Like all of you, I survived the Socratic recitations of our professors----Professor Ambion

in Criminal Law, Professor Estelito Mendoza in Civil Law, and Prof. Troadio Quiazon in

Political Law. I survived the trauma of reciting during Prof. Mendozas class as well as the endless paper chase of case digesting, midterms, and finals.

Now, if you could survive four years of those, there was no reason you could not hurdle

the bar exams. And so I did.

Life as a litigation lawyer fascinated me, and my practice, devoted mostly to representing

indigent clients, took off to a good start. But the days of disquiet and dissent in the late

70s and early 80s called us to speak for freedom and human rights not only in court but first of all in the vast public square where many of those freedoms and rights were being

violated.

I took up the cudgels for the oppressed and marginalized, and got involved in organizing

MABINI, which stands for Movement of Attorneys for Brotherhood, Integrity, and

Nationalism, Inc. When the revolutionary transition came, my public record caught the

eye of our revolutionary president, Cory Aquino, and I was offered the post of O.I.C.

mayor of Makati.

The rest is history. In the more than 20 years that I was mayor of Makati, we succeeded

in transforming the city from a backwater into the countrys premier financial district that has since won citations from the World Bank and other multilateral institutions for its

many programs and accomplishments.

But even then, I remained the underdog. For most of the past administration, they tried

repeatedly to unseat me because of my firm opposition to the policies of former

presidents. But I stuck to my guns, put all my legal training to work, and thwarted all

illegal moves to have me ousted on trumped up charges.

The final test came when I decided to run for Vice President. In December of 2009, when

the campaign started, I was enjoying no more than two percent rating in the surveys. My

own family doubted it was the wisest move I had ever made. In public, they held their

peace, but in private, they were completely merciless, and none of them could be

provoked into betting seriously on my chances.

But I decided the only answers were determination, perseverance, hard work, and

sacrifice, all of which were part of the training in the U.P. College of Law. I covered the

cities and countryside like a fine toothcomb and spoke to everyone who would speak to

me. I then discovered that I had so many cousins I had never met before---mga kasing-

itim, kasing-tanda, at kasing-tangkad---all in the grassroots. These were the masses. Like

Abraham Lincoln, I realized that the Good Lord has made so many men and women like

me, and to them I entrusted my fate. In the end, I got their support.

My friends, I have shared with you my story not from any vain motive, but simply to

remind ourselves of what we can do with determination and courage,

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Even in the poorest and most inauspicious of circumstances. We only need to work hard

with integrity and resolve, calling on what we have learned from others and on our

natural gifts, and keep the fire burning for god, people and country in our hearts.

Even more than what we need to do for each other as alumni, we need to encourage our

young law students to take an early interest in civic and political life, so that they may not

simply quote their law books, but above all learn to breathe the real meaning of the law

with the right spirit.

These are challenging times. Despite our best efforts, there seems to be a growing

complaint that our system of law enforcement is breaking down, that there are attempts to

enact laws that are either superfluous or have little or no constitutional or moral bases,

and that there is not enough consistency or finality in the interpretation of our laws. This

speaks directly to us as lawyers before it speaks to anybody else.

The rule of law remains the ultimate, if not the only, answer to all inclinations and

addictions to lawlessness, dissidence, disorder and crime. But society must have a

common understanding of what the law means, of what justice means, in order for the

rule of law to keep society in fighting shape.

For as Roscoe Pound has observed, The ambiguity of the term law that makes it easy to think of the law as only a body of rules of law is quite as much a menace to the legal

order on one side as overconfident lay trust in legislation is on another side.

We need the law to reaffirm, whenever possible, that which is true about the human

person and promotes life, liberty, human dignity and human well-being. Law cannot

spring from a moral vacuum, nor in any case create it: the lawyer, judge, lawmaker, law

enforcer and plain citizen must recognize that there are certain things that are always

right, and certain things that are always wrong, and which no positivist parliament or

relativist court can (or should) ignore or change.

The moral order is the first building block of the legal order; one does not do away with

the other. And just as the absence of law cannot create the rule of law, neither can the rain of law do so. Law becomes suspect the moment it becomes a sheer instrument of power; it must derive its validity and strength from some authentic moral foundation.

Thus, in a well-ordered society, the lawyers, judges, legislators, law enforcers,

administrators and plain citizens must always work together. Where the church and the

state are separate, even they must work together.

As U.P. Alumni, let us all actively promote that goal. Let us continue to call on the best

and the brightest from our College to help in their areas of special competence.

A number of them have already signed up. Some simply wanted to help, even though

they had very little disposable time; others did not mind giving up their lucrative

corporate niches to be able to do something one is not always given the opportunity to do

in a lifetime.

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In my case, they have been a great help in my many complex and overlapping duties as

chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council or HUDCC and

five other key shelter agencies, Presidential Adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers Concerns, chairman emeritus of the Inter-Agency Committee Against Trafficking, head

of the Task Force Against Illegal Recruitment, and as cabinet member. I could always

count on them to tell me I am wrong whenever I am wrong. That is an indispensable and

irreplaceable service, though an increasingly rare one, in government. May I mention

some of them:

Former Supreme Court Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, U.P. Law 62, legal consultant to the Vice President; Atty. Manuel Sanchez, U.P. Law 67, president, Home Guaranty Corporation; Atty. JV Bautista, U.P. Law 83, consultant on political affairs; Atty. Luis Paredes, U.P. Law 83, trustee, Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board; Atty. Darlene Berberabe, U.P. Law99, president, Pag-ibig Fund. Atty. Berberabe had to give up a high-paying job in a large multinational firm to come on board.

Wherever all our other law alumni may be, I have no doubt they are all doing well, and

that from them will come many of our new leaders, innovators, and possibly game-

changers.

But back to our U.P. Law beloved. To shore-up and sustain its business of producing

great lawyers, I reiterate my commitment to the U.P. Law Centennial Committee to

provide the necessary assistance to help our law graduates prepare for the bar

examinations, and ultimately raise our overall performance in the annual examinations.

We need to work out very carefully the details of this program. But we need to have it

now.

The U.P. College of Law cannot afford to play second fiddle to anyone. The teaching of

law in the grand manner and the making of great lawyers should begin on the very first

day the student enters Malcolm Hall and should be sustained all throughout. They should

never be made incompatible with dominating the annual bar examinations.

Although performance in the bar exams is not the ultimate measure of a lawyers caliber or worth, passing the bar is an absolute requirement, and it is unacceptable that the

mortality rate of our examinees should be going up instead of going down.

In the same way that I implored U.P. during the recent alumni homecoming to win at

least one game in the UAAP, I make this solemn appeal for the College to please produce

bar topnotchers in the coming years.

Thank you very much for this great birthday celebration. Mabuhay ang U.P. College of

Law! Mabuhay tayong lahat! Mabuhay ang mahal nating bansang Pilipinas!