The coming Bar exam results: A perspective
OVER the years, the Bar examinations have proven to be the most prestigious examination among those given by regulators of professions. Its results have been the most watched, awaited, and written about. These results follow the lawyers long after their admission to the practice of law; even their record of failures haunts them.
In the morning of Bar announcement day (i.e., tomorrow, as the Supreme Court itself previously announced), the Bar examinees, their kin and friends, the legal academe, and other Bar watchers will expectantly keep vigil by radio or TV; some will even troop to the Supreme Court grounds to hear these results from the court itself. Even the nation will pause for a while when the results are announced and as these announcements hug the headlines.
The big question to every Bar examinee will always be – did I pass? To others, particularly to the legal academe and the Bar watchers, the more pressing questions are – who are the topnotchers; from what school; what is the passing rate?
To those with an eye on the bigger picture, the Bar results raise many related questions, among them, how capable are our law schools in educating the prospective members of the Bar, and what do these results tell us about our government, our officials, and our society?
The question – did I pass – is easy enough to answer – just look at the SC announcement. The harder question to answer is: how did I pass or fail?
Some examinees do not even internally raise the question of passing. They simply know that they can and will pass the Bar exams. These are the self-confident ones who studiously prepared during their whole law course and who gave their all in the Bar review. The unasked question in their minds is – will I top the Bar exams.
Not very many belong to this category. The remaining others know deep inside that their success or failure depends on the Supreme Court’s inconsistent Bar exam policies and on the predilections of the Bar Chairman and the examiners.
Consider for example last year’s Bar examinations which registered a passing rate of 59.06% and where not one top-tier Manila law school made it to the top ten. People are still speculating on how these results came to pass. Speculations, on the other hand, are farthest from the minds of the current examinees; they are just hoping and praying that this year’s Bar chairman and his examiners would be of the same bent as last year’s.
After having worked at close quarters with the current chairman (he was my seatmate at the Court en banc); knowing how deliberate he is in his actions at the court; and having examined and analyzed his Bar exam questions, I say that the chances are not very great that there would be a repeat of last year’s results.
Care and meticulous crafting of this year’s questions would lose significance if the examinees’ answers would not be appreciated with the same care and given their just due. In the current state of our legal education where many law schools appear reluctant to follow the Legal Education Board (LEB) standards and have even resisted its national entrance exam (PhilSAT) requirements, the just due of many examinees may not be very high.
The question of topnotchers is foolhardy to touch as it involves both individual talent and luck. I can, however, boldly say – with no intent to diminish the accomplishments of last year’s topnotch schools and their distinguished past Bar exam records – that there will be no repeat of last year’s results in terms of the predominance of law schools in the top ten and the complete disappearance of the established toptier law schools from this category. My crystal ball tells me that the distribution this year would be more even.
The more interesting question for me with respect to law schools relates to the bottom dwellers, based on my hope that the LEB would seriously review their performance and decide to phase them out because their continued existence is a continuing fraud on students and their parents. These law schools should be given the same media prominence accorded to this year’s top schools, to send the message that students should no longer enroll there if they want to become lawyers. Let the market decide if the LEB hesitates to act.
President Duterte who does not hide his Bar exam grade of 75% should belatedly be recognized by the court to be deserving of a higher grade for his many correct and wise readings of the law. The latest of these readings is his decision to send the “endo” issue to Congress for legislative policy determination.
The separation of power principle was apparently not lost on the President who correctly followed the constitutional rule that the Legislature determines what the law should be. The President’s role is the implementation of the law that Congress passes; he cannot, in the guise of executive rulemaking, exceed what the law ordains.
I would not give the same recognition to the lawyers who asked the United Nations to intervene in our internal affairs because of the President’s alleged “tirades” against Chief Justice Sereno.
I would even give them a failing grade in college level History and Political Science as they effectively tried to negate the efforts and accomplishments of the late President Manuel L. Quezon, Vice President Sergio Osmena, and their contemporaries who had fought for Philippine independence and full sovereignty. Aside from failing to grasp that Chief Justice Sereno is not the Judiciary, they also forgot to distinguish between law and politics.
Neither President Duterte nor Chief Justice Sereno staked out legal positions in their exchange which the chief justice started and which the lawyers brought to the UN for intervention.
Unusually for a chief justice, she specifically referred in this exchange to the sub judice Quo Warranto petition against her, while the President’s reply mentioned their hostile relationship and referred to the delayed action by the House of the impeachment case against the chief justice.
At this level of discourse, the exchange was more political than anything else: the chief justice cleverly baited the President with a very public political challenge to which the latter (true to form) made an angry retort.
This kind of exchange, addressing the public through the media, is pure politics that the chief justice mined for its drama that included a referral by the complaining lawyers of the exchange to the level of the UN for intervention.
In my view, trouble awaits the nation when a chief justice who is supposed to be apolitical, plays a political game that involved placing the sovereignty of our country to disrepute. For this kind of move, I would give the chief justice’s Bar exam grade a very negative recognition; she got more credit than she deserved.