Wednesday, November 29, 2006 Lawmaker bats for activation of legal education body
SENATOR Edgardo Angara has asked the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) to activate the Legal Education Board (LEB) after approval of its 2007 budget allocations.
Angara said the Association of Law Deans (ALD) had been asking funding support from Congress for the activation of the LEB. "This has been passed a long time ago," he added.
Dean Mariano Magsalin Jr., ALD president and dean of the Arellano Law School, said the LEB never functioned since it was created in 1993.
Magsalin said the board will be composed of a retired justice of the Supreme Court (SC) who will sit as chairman, a representative of the legal profession, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, a representative of the Philippine Judges Association, a representative of law deans, and a law student.
He is optimistic that the board would be organized in 2007 and it would serve as the vehicle to implement changes in the curriculum of various law schools.
He said SC Associate Justice Dante Tinga, a former dean of the College of Law of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), was with him in the crusade to organize the LEB.
Under the law, the Ched exercises administrative powers over the LEB.
Angara said there is a need to activate the board because it will function as supervisor of law schools.
He also said in the present system, it is the SC that has sole power and control over law schools nationwide. "Right now legal education is dictated in content and in examination by the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court says this is the subject then you must study that subject. If the Supreme Court says this is the subject of the bar examination, then you must concentrate on that subject," Angara said.
Magsalin said there are subjects in the bar examinations that should be changed already as some are already incompatible with the present times.
The bar examination covers eight law subjects such as political, civil, criminal, labor, taxation, commercial, ethics, remedial.
Compared to the US bar examinations, there are only constitution, contracts, criminal evidence and torts, Magsalin said.
"There is a need to reduce the subjects in the bar examinations. We have proposed that already to the Supreme Court," Magsalin said.
In the 2006 aborted budget, the LEB had an allocation of P20 million. Efforts have been made in Congress to allocate again P20 million in the 2007 budget for the LEB, which would be discussed in the bicameral conference committee.
Meanwhile, Senator Panfilo Lacson batted Monday for a bigger budget for agencies involved in judiciary work as he scored the skewed distribution of resources in the proposed P1.126 trillion budget for 2007.
Lacson, who lauded the judiciary led by the SC for showing independence and intelligence, proposed that some items in the proposed budget be realigned to various courts for their operating expenses.
Under the present proposed budget for 2007, the judiciary stands to get P9.6 billion or less than one percent of the entire budget pie. In contrast, the executive branch will get P570 billion or more than half of the entire budget.
Lacson said the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government. The judiciary's main agencies include the SC, Court of Appeals, Court of Tax Appeals, Presidential Electoral Tribunal, and the Sandiganbayan.
"If only for that, will you agree with me that we should at least augment the less than one percent budget allocated for the judiciary," he told Senator Franklin Drilon, chairman of the Senate finance committee.
Lacson said at the proper time, during the period of amendments, he may propose certain realignments of funds from some departments to the judiciary.
Records show that at least 32,000 workers are employed in the judiciary, roughly estimated at two percent of the 1.4 million government work force, for which only P9.6 billion is allotted out of the proposed P1.126 trillion national. (CPB/Sunnex)
