Entry to law school

Dominador Awiten

THE Supreme Court on Friday (March 15, 2019) issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) to momentarily stop the Legal Education Board from requiring applicants for admission to a law school to take and pass the Philippine Law School Admission Test (Philsat). 

The LEB, as the agency that supervises law schools, has as basis for the Philsat RA No. 7662 or the Legal Education Reform Act of 1993.

Philsat is a multiple choice type with subjects on Communication and Language Proficiency, Critical Thinking Skills, Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning. 

With the pendency of the matter at the Supreme Court, we avoid from dealing with the merits of the petition.  However, we may discuss the standing jurisprudence concerning the admission of qualified persons to engage in the practice of law.

Court decisions, particularly in the United States, are in favor of the  academic freedom of schools and of teachers. It is usually meant to  be “the right to teach as one sees fit.”  However, it does not necessarily include the right to teach evil in keeping with the legal maxim that one’s right ends where another’s right begins.

The advocacy for academic freedom came to the fore in the US Supreme Court decision in the case of  Adler v. Board of Education of City of New York, 342 US 485, (1952), where the majority upheld a New York  State civil service law that prohibited employment of public school teachers if they were members of “subversive organizations.” In his strong dissent, Justice William O. Douglas said that such a law can only be enforced in a police state and is contrary to the Constitutional guarantee of free speech.

Academic freedom is likened to the pursuit of truth, which is undermined when the law compels “standardized thought.” Douglas argued that the Constitution was framed by those who “knew the strength that comes when the mind is free.”

The decision on the issue may or may not rest on the Supreme Court’s long-held jurisprudence that the admission into the practice of law is a judicial power – and if in the affirmative this time, that admission starts at the first rung of legal education, assuming that the Supreme Court will consider the LEB as an adjunct to the Court’s authority over the admission of qualified persons to law practice.

In its holding on the petitions for admission of the Bar Flunkers in In Re Cunanan, et.al. (1954), the Court said that: “In (our) judicial system, the admission, suspension, disbarment and reinstatement of attorneys at law have been indisputably a judicial function and responsibility.”

Stated otherwise, the admission or rejection of a candidate for the Bar is a judicial decision, rendered on a finding of fact and the applicable law, and such a decision cannot be repealed nor substituted even by legislation.

A related matter is the case of a member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines who wished to avoid his dues delinquency by claiming a right not to join the integrated bar.

In the case of Atty. Marcial A. Edilion (1978), the Court said that integration necessarily follows from membership of the Bar and is compelled by the Court’s exercise of the police power or the power of regulation.

Finally, it may be illuminating to mention the concept of practice of law as discussed in the case of Cayetano versus Monsod (1991). 

Justice Edgardo Paras wrote that practice of law involves “any activity, in or out of court, which requires the application of law, legal procedure, knowledge, training and experience.”  

Law practice, thus, is both in and out of court.

The law student is well guided by the words of Harvard-educated lawyer Bruce Wassertein, to wit: “A bad lawyer is one who fails to spot problems, a good lawyer is one who perceives the difficulties, and the excellent lawyer is one who surmounts them.” (Business Star, “Corporate Finance Law,” Jan. 11, 1989). 

Such excellence is a function of a sound legal education.