Sunday, March 5
What nonsense
Proclamation 1017 was lifted last Friday, but the Supreme Court hearing on it will continue as scheduled, at least according to the papers. Good. Even two-bit lawyers—heck, two-bit law students!—can see that GMA’s declaration of a state of emergency is unconstitutional, a blatant manipulation of the constitutional provisions for declaring a national emergency and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. (Connie V makes a good job of dissecting it in her Manila Standard Today column.) Proclamation 1017 has no basis at all in law, and why the Supreme Court didn’t issue a TRO right away is a great mystery to me. It just makes no sense. The only thing that makes sense at this point, actually, is to keep shouting 'FOUL!' at the top of one's lungs.
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Sometimes I feel like we're back in college, the only thing we can do is take to the streets and mobilize. I thought we'd gone past that, but my God! The Arroyo government is the pits! She's gone around the bend with this declaration! Then again, I think our reactions were heaps better than our parents back in the day when Marcos declared Martial Law. Back then, my parents told me, people actually encouraged the move. Hard to imagine, 'no?
Speaking of nonsense--and utterly crass--actions, one of the magazines (Lifestyle Asia) in my company put on the cover for March, Bongbong Marcos--and by extension, the whole Marcos family. I just think it's in poor taste to be glamorizing them considering how this family plundered the Filipino people. Then again, why am I even surprised? Not even a decade after 1986, these people were back in power! Sometimes I really feel there is no hope for us...
Unfortunately, as a whole, Filipinos never learn.
But isn't the law profession all about spinning the law to serve and justify one interest over another? In fact, Proclamation 1017 can only have originated from the minds of lawyers and no one else.
Is it then true that lawyers embrace the gray areas of written law, for it is only here where the profession finds expression, and its game?
There are always gray areas (in law as in life ;) No piece of legislation can cover every imaginable situation. The job of the courts (and lawyers, who are officers of the court) is to interpret the intent of a law. The power of the judiciary is precisely that--to rule over disputing claims, to settle conflicting interests. Justice is a gray spot in the sky.
"Justice is a gray spot in the sky."--Hmmm, I like dat! :)
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