star ascending

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time...
-Longfellow

The ascension of Marvic Leonen to the deanship of the UP College of Law last week makes one believe in divine justice. A consistent activist since he was law student, he was one of the founders of LRCKSK, the NGO where I worked from 2003 to 2005 (another founder of LRC, Tony La Viña, is the dean of the Ateneo School of Government). Here's a brief and inspiring story of his work as a public interest lawyer from his CV:

Prof. Leonen received invitations to join established law firms right after he graduated. However, believing that there was a need to set up more public interest groups that provided competent professional legal services to rural poor and indigenous peoples communities, in December of 1987, he co-founded a legal and policy research and advocacy institution now known as the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center Inc-Kasama sa Kalikasan (LRCKSK/ Friends of the Earth Philippines).

Through this organization, Prof. Leonen was able to develop expertise in the fields of applied constitutional law, natural resources law, Philippine indigenous law, remedial law and many others. Prof. Leonen continues to learn from the various communities he works with. He has traveled extensively to different ecosystems in the Philippines working with various farmers and indigenous peoples groups. He has also visited agrarian communities in other Asian countries.

Within the fifteen (15) years that Prof. Leonen acted as the LRCKSK’s executive director, he nurtured a small organization of four individuals and one office to a nationally and internationally known public interest group affiliated with the biggest environmental network (Friends of the Earth) with four offices and thirty six (36) committed, inspired and dedicated staff. Institutional development included setting up the organization, alignment of its staff, articulating and evaluating human resource policies, conflict resolution, establishing training and mentoring modules, recruitment, fundraising and many others. By the time he left the organization as its Executive Director, it already had a substantial endowment fund to continue its operations and a lot of goodwill based on its track record of assisting indigenous communities.

Prof. Leonen was also instrumental in the establishment of other public interest law groups in the Philippines. He helped found the Sentro para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo sa Pilipinas He participated in the evolution of the network of public/ alternative law groups called the Alternative Law Group Network and at one time acted as its convenor. Among others he sat in the board of the Womens’ Legal Bureau and the WomenLEAD.

Prof. Leonen also joined the Free Legal Assistance Group in 1987. There he gained his experience in civil and political rights litigation as well as paralegal training. He worked with political detainees, the families of the disappeared, victims of domestic violence and the urban poor sector.

Prof. Leonen practiced law by setting up these institutions, clarifying their terms of engagement with various communities, understanding the elements of empowering practice and evolving competence to appear and win in all levels of the judiciary as well as the quasi judicial agencies which include the Departments of Agrarian Reform, Environment and Natural Resources, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) as well as SEC and the BIR.

By the time I worked in LRC, Dean Leonen (or Marvic, as we called him then) was no longer involved in its day-to-day affairs, though he served as the chair of its board of trustees. As such, I had few opportunities to know him as a person, and up to now I see him more as a heroic archetype, a mirror that allows one to see oneself more clearly.

I saw another side of his in 2004, on the day we had oral arguments for La Bugal-B'laan vs. Ramos in the Supreme Court. Before leaving UP, he requested that we visit the UP Chapel. He knelt and prayed briefly and quietly- he seemed like a solitary figure carrying an unimaginable weight on his shoulders. I thought he gave the best performance among the lawyers in Court that day and was surprised when we lost the case. Perhaps God in His or Her wisdom is finally answering his prayer now, though not in a way that he expected or imagined.

Dean Leonen is a well-read scholar and a published writer and would make an erudite Supreme Court Justice, in the mold of Chief Justice Puno. His work with indigenous peoples and his studies in gritty New York make him one of the most cosmopolitan and postmodern law deans in Philippine history. The trait, though, which I think makes him the perfect UP centennial law dean is his tried-and-tested ability to apply cutting-edge ideas to solve concrete problems. For example, years before Justice Mendoza suggested making the bar exams more objective by using multiple-choice questions, Marvic was already using these in his exams. The buzzword in UP Law right now- from Dean Leonen's vision paper- is andragogy (adult learning). Some of Dean Leonen's exciting plans for the College of Law are in his blog here- if there's anyone who can reform our country's legal profession as an educator, it would be him. Congratulations Dean!