A maritime lawyer by profession, sometimes called Frog Prince of the Philippines with currently more than a thousand of collectible frog items. Like the frogs with a reputation for leaping that is well deserved, jump with me to my froglandia as we travel and explore the world seeking symbols of divine powers of love, fertility, regeneration, rebirth, immortality, and transformation.
UP LAW : 100 years of Honor, Excellence, and Service.
"The crowning glory of this law school that it has kindled in many hearts an inextinguishable fire. a great law school sets lawyers’ hearts on fire. And not just any fire, but an inextinguishable fire. An unquenchable fire. You become a kind of eternal torch for law and justice, as it were.” thus pronounced Vice President Jejomar Binay.
The country’s premiere law school, the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law,capped the celebrations of its 100th year with the much-awaited Grand Centennial Homecoming at the PICC Reception Hall on Nov. 11, 2011. The Class of 1986, this year’s silver jubilarian class, hosted the event.
Atty. Gilbert and Judge Jing Nolasco with Dean Danny Concepcion
Martin Lacdao
Good friend Honey oliveros
Judge Jing Nolasco as muse
Earlier this year, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III declared 2011 as the “University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law Centennial Year.” In line with that, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has released commemorative P100 bills with the UP College of Law’s logo in it.
The "most frequent" question i received that night was "Anong Batch ka?". My immediate response was "Motion to Clarify: (a) year i took the entrance exam (b) year i entered UPLAW (c) year graduated and took the bar exams. The answer (a) i took the exam in 91 but have to defer due to deficiency Spanish units so my supposed original batch is 95. (b) I entered in 1992 section C making 1996 as my ideal graduation year but i took a leave and returned as an "international student" by joining the evening working class (c) 1998 when i officially finished my LLB and took the bar exam. I am lucky that I was able to pass the during my first attempt. And I proved something to myself that I could do something that is really hard to accomplish. I finished law at UP College of Law in Diliman as a working student. I write for TODAY as one of their regular reporter covering a wide range of topics such as environment, human rights, politics, peace process, agriculture, agrarian reform and many more. I was also a correspondent for international news agencies like Reuters, AFP, AP, UPI etc. The income i derived from these news entities i utilized to finance my law studies. Take note: my daily schedule is writing in the morning and the afternoon before going to UP to attend my classes in the evening. Then I go home where I read the assignments for the following day during the almost two hours trip of the bus going to Las Pinas. In between my work and classes, I still go hiking with my friends called the Squakings.
Perhaps what made my stay in UP Law as memorable was when in August23, 1997 i was kidnapped after our Moot Court. This experience i wrote in my piece "Face to Face with Crime" “SIGE, tumakbo ka na ng mabilis at huwag kang lilingon at baka barilin pa kita (Run, Run fast and don’t turn back or I’ll shoot you).” The words could be apart of a movie script, but these were in fact words of my abductors . To me, words of freedom.
The challenge remains on how to keep UP the great law school as it was envisioned in Justice Holme's immortal words engraved at the institution's Malcolm Hall lobby:
THE BUSINESS OF A LAW SCHOOL IS NOT SUFFICIENTLY DESCRIBED WHEN YOU MERELY SAY THAT IT IS TO TEACH LAW OR TO MAKE LAWYERS IT IS TO TEACH LAW IN THE GRAND MANNER, AND TO MAKE GREAT LAWYERS.
The College first conferred the Juris Doctor (J.D.) on its April 2008 graduates, after a change in degree title was approved by the U.P. administration the previous year. Like the majority of law schools in the country, U.P. used to provide the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), a standard four-year law program covering all subjects in the bar exams, until the change to J.D. was made in order to more accurately reflect the U.P. law program being a "professional as well as a post baccalaureate degree.
The college is noted for having produced the largest number of bar topnotchers and maintaining one of the highest bar passing rates among law schools in the Philippines
Proof of 100 years of excellence: Four Philippine Presidents , four vice presidents, Five senate presidents, five speakers of the House, twelve Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, forty-six (46) bar topnotchers/ In the Philippine Bar's recorded history, the highest grade first recorded was the 92% garnered in 1913 by Manuel A. Roxas of the UP College of Law.
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