Take up cudgels for poor, oppressed, new lawyers told

‘SO HELP ME GOD’ In a first for the country’s legal profession, Kenneth Glenn Manuel of the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Civil Law, the sixth placer in last year’s bar exams, takes his oath as a lawyer online at his apartment in Sampaloc, Manila, on Thursday, as mass gatherings remain restricted in the capital due to the coronavirus pandemic. —RICHARD A. REYES

Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic Leonen on Thursday denounced the cyberbullying experienced by journalists and netizens who “speak truth to power,” following the online oath-taking of new lawyers.

“Journalists worldwide suffer simply because they seek to verify and validate the truth. Those who speak truth to power, even in ordinary social media platforms, experience what it means to be shamed and cyberbullied,” Leonen said, addressing new lawyers during the court’s first online oath-taking ceremony that was broadcast live on PTV, the government channel.

2,103 new lawyers

Leonen, an active Twitter user and chair of next year’s Bar exams, urged the 2,103 lawyers sworn in by videoconference to take the cudgels for the marginalized and the oppressed.

Quoting his “good friend“ former student activist Lean Alejandro, who was assassinated in the late 1980s, Leonen said: ‘The line of fire is always a place of honor.”

Political act

He added: “Our silence when we fall victim or after we serve as accomplices to corrupt acts of the powerful is also our own powerful political act. Our silence maintains the status quo. It also ensures that others will also be victimized. Our silence when we have the ability to speak is in itself a cause of injustice,” Leonen said.

Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Estela Perlas-Bernabe, who chaired the 2019 Bar exams, reminded the new lawyers that they are “in a unique position of innovating ways to ensure that justice becomes accessible to all and that our law remains a staunch bulwark of our people’s rights and freedoms.”