Nagging questions on legal ethics and values formation
ILEAVE for now (without ending it) my series on the Supreme Court in order to focus on another law-related topic whose time in the public eye has come.
I refer to ethics and values in the legal academe and in the legal profession – a topic that the recent Castillo hazing incident brought to the fore. In the law school, this topic is embodied in Legal Ethics, the Bar examination subject that carries the least grading weight (5%) but whose potential impact on lawyers’ professional lives and even on the governance of the nation is way beyond this grading weight.
This line of thought leapt to mind after I read in the newspapers about the Internet fraternity chat among resident and alumni members of Aegis Juris. The reports claimed that these exchanges showed how the fraternity intended to evade responsibility for the death of neophyte Horacio Castillo.
As lawyers or law students who have gone beyond their freshman year, these fraternity members already know their Criminal Law. They are aware of the nature of the acts that led to the death of their neophyte, the consequences of these acts, and the accompanying criminal liabilities (in the words of one of the participants, “the legal implications could be catastrophic”), the critical elements of the offense committed, and the steps – legal or illegal – they could take to evade responsibility
According to news reports, one of the chat participants even said: “Bukas makakakuha na sila [ng] search warrant sa frat lib. Sana malinis na. Matangga[l] na ang paddle d’un.” They even thought of possible documentary evidence, starting with CCTV footage covering the frat house. They planned, too, to erase their chats to prevent access by the investigating authorities.
From a wider legal perspective, these fraternity members appeared to have fully recognized the criminal law implications of Castillo’s hazing death but did not think at all of the ethical implications of his death and their handling of its aftermath. Nor did the lawyers among them remember their obligations under their lawyer’s oath. Their concern for their “frat” and their “brods” overshadowed everything else: nobody thought of the slain victim; they even thought of the victim’s family in adversarial terms, referring to them as “kalaban.”
These early indicators and attitudes should – at the very least – trigger among those of us engaged in legal education and its regulation (including the Supreme Court in its role as supervisor of lawyers), soul-searching questions about law students’ and lawyers’ ethics and values.
What went wrong with their ethics and values, and where lies the problem?
Do the fraternity members’ actions and attitudes reflect an aberration, or are they indicators of a deeper systemic problem in legal education?
Does the problem point to a greater malignancy that exists in our society?
Who should act and what solutions should those in authority consider?
The Senate is now investigating the hazing death in aid of legislation. Its response in the past had been an Anti-Hazing Act. Conceivably, its response this time would be an amendment tightening the terms of this Act.
Will its solution involve educational measures touching on law students’ ethical studies and lawyers’ ethics and the formation of proper values, or will it simply address the presence of fraternities in the campus and the regulation of their activities?
The Supreme Court is not directly concerned with legal education but it passes upon the results of this education. It admits lawyers to the legal profession based largely on a qualifying examination, and thereafter supervises them. In another month, the court will again administer this year’s round of Bar examinations.
Will the court react to the Aegis Juris developments by reflecting, in the coming Bar examinations, special concerns that it may have for legal ethics and the values formation that would make the study of legal ethics meaningful?
The Commission on Higher Education and the Legal Education Board (LEB) formulate the general policies on legal education, including the curricula that law schools must follow.
Will the LEB undertake its own study of the Castillo hazing incident for lessons that will lead to new policies on the teaching of legal ethics, on students’ values formation, and on the regulation of student organizations in law schools? How will the LEB reflect its legal ethics initiatives in law schools’ curricula and in the teaching of law?
Will the Philippine Association of Law Schools (which acts through their law deans) wade into the hazing problem through self-policing measures that will guide their memberschools on the regulation of student organizations, and that will give added meaning to the legal ethics that law schools teach?
Will PALS, for example, support the establishment of a LEB registry that shall record law students’ criminal and ethical transgressions as guides for member-schools in the admission of applicants for enrollment? Or, will it simply wait out Castillo’s hazing death and consider it a passing problem that will soon go away?
What should individual law schools do to address any incipient hazing problem in their midst and to inculcate higher and nobler values among their students? Or, will law school administrators simply shrug their shoulders with the thought that their efforts against hazing cannot rise higher than their concern for their students’ Bar passing ratings?
From among all these, action at the law school level should be the swiftest in terms of obtainable results. But even at this level, immediate answers and concrete actions may not be readily forthcoming given the many interests to consider, some of which may even be competing. This reality though should not deter the legal academe from immediately acting on the problem using means already available and, at the very least, from putting upfront the consideration of mid-term and long-term measures on the teaching of ethics and values formation.
Their responses will no longer help Horacio “Atio” Castillo III, but might spell the difference in the future for other students. Inevitably, their responses will show their own values as legal educators and demonstrate how they teach and train their students in legal ethics and values formation. These responses should also reveal the deficiencies that led to the callous disregard of legal ethics and values in the Aegis Juris members’ handling of their neophyte’s death.