Why lawyers matter: Marvic Leonen at TEDxDiliman

I suspect I should ask you for more sympathy, first because I am following Joey Ayala, who probably committed an illegal act here, we will probably have to argue that in the Supreme Court and second, because I have been assigned a very difficult task that is within our powers. For the next 18 minutes I have to convince you that

lawyers

matter

and, well, I'm used to very difficult tasks. You know, talking to the largest insurgent group in the country and asking them to sign a framework agreement that was very difficult, but it took me 2 years not 18 minutes but in any case I would like to start with 197 9 when I entered the university in the Philippines knowing that What I wanted to do was be a lawyer.

I entered the portals of this university, the school of economics, and at that time we were just beginning to discover that martial law was not what it should be, that there was widespread poverty everywhere and that they were producing human rights violations. I entered the Faculty of Law in 1983 and the following years. year in which Nino yino was shot, read Alejandro was murdered and we were in the streets walking and asking for the dictator to come down and uh, of course, at that moment we saw that the law was not also what it should be, I became a leading lawyer.

I joined the free legal aid group and one of the first cases they gave me was a raid on a Shanti in Novaliches and there they found some firearms and they asked me to do the impossible which was to try to get people acquitted. of illegal possession of firearms, but I had firearms, so I thought, this is what a lawyer is supposed to be, so I thought to myself, what should I do? Then I remember the constitutional law, article 3, section 2, the right of the people to be safe in their unreasonable places of papers and effects against churches and teurs will be inviolable, inviolable and no search warrant or arrest warrant will be issued except when probable cause will be determined by the judge after particularly describing the place, wait one minute in quotes after particularly describing after particularly describing the place to be searched, wait one minute.

I looked at Shanti's unnumbered order, so I moved to vacate and exclude the evidence that had been granted. My clients were acquitted, they were NPA people but now they reentered society, so that was one of my first successes as a lawyer and nullified by that, inspired by that, we thought that the law

matter

ed for the people for whom the law It's very real, so what we did was we established the Center for Legal Rights and Natural Resources, we toured the country, we worked with indigenous people groups, we climbed mountains. Apo several times, six times I think with Joey Ayala and then we found out that there was a commercial geothermal power plant that was about to be built right in the heart of the Bobo ancestral domain, so what did we do as

lawyers

? a 15 57 page petition that we thought was very creative, first of all it was a protected area and in the middle of the protected area they were going to put a commercial project, a commercial geothermal power plant and we thought arguing that in a protected area in the concept of the law in the idea of ​​what a protected area was, since we imported from developed countries, there should be no commercial activity within the first argument, second argument, this was the first environmental impact statement evaluated by the DNR and we thought it was Ya It was time because there was Section 16 of Article 2 of the Constitution that the rhythm of Harmony and Nature required the court to extend its judicial review more narrowly to administrative cases coming from the DNR so that not only substantial evidence but that were also considered about the use of science in terms of the environmental impact statement very good AR arguments very brilliant very creative, so we presented it to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court issued a one-page decision dismissing our case outright without even asking the respondents to present a civil society we had faced an entire movement that wanted to prevent the invasion of APO sandawa or Mount Apo in that moment we filed the motion for reconsideration again arguing the same points but citing more law journals and more Juris Prudence on our side, the motion for reconsideration was longer than the petition and finally the Supreme Court again issued a one-page decision, this time in a paragraph that said not to dismiss the substantial arguments raised and that was our case in Mount Appo but we were not discouraged because we saw that the law had to be argued at the right time so that at some point in the year 2000 we would find ourselves with a community which said it was facing the largest mining concession ever awarded. in this country 95,000 hectares as far as the eye can see is 400 hectares at all ends 94,000 struggles four provinces in Mindanao so what we did for them was to prepare the petition that was titled Labal Tribal Association versus DNR our argument was very simple the constitution of The Republic of the Philippines, in Article 12, Section 4, said that only a financial or technical assistance agreement would be permitted for any foreign-owned concession in this country.

This was a change from our old Constitution. Now this concession was totally foreign owned but they operated. they would manage they would provide financial assistance and technical assistance it was an N not an or so we presented before the Supreme Court our arguing our case that the intention of the Sovereign people expressed to the Constitution was to declare this law unconstitutional January 2004 with a majority of eight to six against and one who did not participate, the Supreme Court of the Republic of the Philippines declared that the first FDA in this country, the first largest wholly foreign-owned mining concession in this country, was unconstitutional, null and void initial AB value, we celebrate We went up to the mountains we told our people that this is how the law moves, this is your Constitution, you are part of the Republic of the Philippines, but then a motion for reconsideration was filed and the motion for reconsideration was heard by the Supreme Court. no less than two retired judges defending the Chamber of Minds and we argued as best we could.

I stood there for 8 hours in front of the Supreme Court and the bench and they stood there for a few hours arguing their case in December of that same year the vote was 10 4 1 and we lost the case it was overturned in a span of 11 months the Supreme Court read that provision differently and we had to reach out to the community to explain why the law still mattered and it was a difficult way to explain to them that's what the law is sometimes it's for you sometimes it's against you But why does the law matter and why do lawyers matter? for simple reasons four simple reasons the first simplest The reason is because the law is real.

The law is real because there is a law. The police can come and get you. They'll get you for color coding. You will be arrested for some type of crime, including singing the National Anthem incorrectly. I'm just saying uh poo is a lawyer the law is real for people who need the law for example a daughter being raped by a father 11 times we just made that decision a week ago the law is real for people that they need to go. against a taxpayer who is asking them to pay more than they do, therefore you will need lawyers.

The second reason why lawyers matter is that because the law evolves earlier, when we filed the Mount Appo case, there was no R for kalikasan, now there is one. The lawyers wrote it before when we were lawyers for the families of involuntarily disappeared people. The only thing we had was a document from Havas Corpus. Today you can have a RIT from Amparo and more than that, you can have a document from obvious data. Before, we cannot discuss ancestral domain. that the indigenous peoples' rights law before cannot discuss uh environment today you can obtain a kalikasan RIT at any of the levels of our court and we have issued a cican r for several projects in the court the lawyers will help you adjust the law so that, of course, more people are helped and, of course, to balance the needs of our country for business development and the needs of our country for social justice, the third reason why lawyers matter is because the law helps us understand ourselves with confidence.

There are concepts of property that define who for us is an agricultural tenant and who is a land owner, but our concepts of property also say that property is about social justice, that property can be limited, therefore , it has limitations on the exercise of property taking into account Consider the environment, it has new provisions in the law and it has provisions in both the treaty and the law that say that in times of war, whether it is a full-blown war between two states or wars known as armed conflicts. of a non-international nature like what happened in Sanga that civilians must be protected they tell us that civilians are important of course we still have to fight because laws evolve men can only commit adultery women can H concubinage Sorry women can only commit can commit adultery prostitutes are criminals we still have a lot to do the only way you can separate from your spouse well one of the ways you can separate from your spouse believe me I have experience in this the only way that one of the ways The way you can separate from your spouse is to demonstrate the condition called psychological incapacity, a concept of only one religious sect within our country and not all, but even so these laws exist, they can evolve, they tell us who we are and therefore, It is important that we have lawyers who understand it and therefore we try to change it so that how we constitute ourselves, how we understand our identity, is there and, by the way, bang samor will soon be by law not a minority but a legitimate identity. within our country and the fourth reason I think the most important reason why lawyers matter is because lawyers are a luxury, you only go to lawyers in times of need, unless they are your friends, in which case You have a few drinks with them, not because they are lawyers, you start talking about the law, they start to be boring, but normally you only want to go to a lawyer when you are at the back of your line, when you are actually facing a prison sentence, when you are actually faced with bir assessment, when you are actually faced with the need to liquidate your internal resources when you are actually faced with conditions like a mining company entering your ancestral domain.

Here is an example of a situation that was caused by a lawyer, a lawyer got a job to stop a mining company from entering the mountains in WEA Viscaya and she was a very tiny person, uh, very repetitive, but she was able to get a job to stop a mining company there, I would only go to a lawyer at that time, therefore, lawyers matter because they will hold your hand because they are the ones who should serve you with compassion because they are the ones who will sit with you in your moments of trouble even with your spouses even with your enemies they are the ones that will be there and stick with you hopefully with or without payment of attorney fees until the end and because they need to be there therefore lawyers matter we need lawyers, we need good lawyers, we need lawyers who understand that they are not a joke, we need lawyers who understand that their careers are not careers, it is a profession, it is a passion and I tell you that is why lawyers matter.

I'm Marvick Len, I'm a lawyer.