I agree entirely with the recent well-prepared article written by prominent and senior Filipino lawyer, thinker and columnist Ricardo Romulo on the matter of requiring applicants to the Philippine judiciary to complete a pre-judicial master’s degree on law and jurisprudence for at least one (1) year as a prerequisite to their formal appointment to the judiciary in order to improve the quality and effectiveness of the Philippine justice system.
Please read below the verbatim article of Atty. Romulo.
His detailed recommendations as stated in the article should be seriously studied by the policy-makers in the Philippine Supreme Court and its attached judicial training agency, the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA).
Business Matters
Course content for a pre-judicial master’s degree
By Ricardo Romulo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:45:00 02/19/2010
WITH THE ELECTIONS ON MAY 10 engaging everyone, reform in preparing aspirants for the judiciary is the farthest from everyone’s mind. But the elections, too, shall pass; and when the political fever subsides, the judiciary will remain, as it had always been, an area needing reform.
I thus opt, even at the risk of not being read at all, to further develop the idea of a pre-judicial master’s degree course as a requirement for aspirants to the judiciary.
The matters to be taken up in such a course are really suggested by the Constitution. In addition to competence, integrity, probity and independence, a judge is expected to render decisions in a definite way.
“No decision,” says the Constitution “shall be rendered by any court without expressing therein clearly and distinctly the facts and the law on which it is based.” (Sec. 14, Art. VIII)
Thus, a judge needs (a) sufficient “stock knowledge” of the law; (b) the ability to determine facts and then to select from a body of legal principles the applicable rules; and finally, (c) the facility to express his findings and conclusions “clearly and distinctly.”
The audience of a judge’s decision goes beyond the small circle of the contending parties. There are at the perimeter of the courtroom not only the usual ministers of the temple, such as the lawyers, law students, law professors, court personnel, but also the lay retinue of reporters from mass media, legal commentators, public service practitioners, etc. For a judge to truly perform his role in society, he must be aware that, while his main function is to decide cases, his entire constituency is not only the particular parties to a case but also both the legal priesthood and the lay who are closely scrutinizing his work.
For many, the ability to do a judge’s job does not come naturally. Hence, there is need for special preparation. A two-semester course described below taken at the Judicial Academy may be what is required to supply that preparation.
The first semester, with lectures as medium of instruction, should start with a quick refresher and updater on the traditional subjects, such as Evidence, Civil and Criminal Procedure, Methods of Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Human Rights. Once this is over, the greater part of the semester should be talks from specialists on new areas of interest. These include Law and the Environment, Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Crime and Fraud in Cyber Space, Gender Issues, Law and the Social Sciences and Cultural Aspects of the Administration of Justice.
It is now acknowledged that even within a short period of time new developments proliferate the legal landscape. Over the last 10 years, we saw the new Writ of Amparo and Writ of Habeas Data; special procedures for handling child witnesses, for using electronic evidence, and for treatment of abused women. We face new life-and-death legislation, like the reproductive health bill, rights of terminal patients, etc. Indeed, so many things that were most likely not taken up in law school have a big chance of becoming common when aspirants become judges.
The culminating work product for this first semester ought to be a mini-thesis worthy of publication on a specific question in an emerging subject.
The second semester should focus on the craft of being a judge; from lofty principles in the first semester, down to ground level practical in the second. Focus will be on courtroom environment maintenance, caseload monitoring, management of people, such as court personnel, police and security detail and even janitorial and sanitation service providers.
Very important is computer literacy and familiarity with the Internet a must. An aspirant must know how to access the many resources in the web, how to work with software, how to enhance his ability to take notes during a proceeding, how to organize his e-jottings into an easily retrievable format and, most important, assemble both words and ideas in arriving at and writing his decision.
The preferred method of instruction for the second semester is the case method; business school, not law school, style. Not digesting and reciting on decided cases, but solving carefully and skillfully written practical situations that challenge the skill, creativity, imagination and out-of-the box thinking of the aspirants. This case method will replicate, in the laboratory atmosphere of a classroom, the daily tasks demanded of a judge.
The main event in the second semester is the moot court. Aspirants will be asked to sit as the judge in a “case” where well-known trial and appellate practitioners are recruited to be the pretend- parties litigant and the contending attorneys.
The idea is to have an artificial case unfold over the whole semester before the very eyes of the aspirants—from initiatory pleadings, to pre-trial, to discovery sessions, to trial, and memorandum or brief submission, all the way to submission of the case for decision. It will serve as on-the-job training, but in a laboratory controlled environment where the aspirants encounter typical situations of real court life.
At the end, each aspirant will be asked to submit his written decision which will be evaluated to determine his fitness to be a judge.
(Note: Ricardo J. Romulo is a senior partner of Romulo Mabanta Buenaventura Sayoc & De Los Angeles).
See:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100219-254229/Course-content-for-a-pre-judicial-masters-degree
