VIEWS FROM THE RIDGE
LEE EDSON P. YARCIA, MD, JD
Legal Officer, Philja Chancellor’s Office
From day one of my service with Philja as Legal Officer, the Chancellor has always reminded me to consider medical perspectives in giving legal advice. He stressed – “draw lessons from experience” quoting from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: “the life of the law has not been logic but experience.”
He said this as he knew that before becoming a lawyer, I had worked in public health as a physician and can thus readily appreciate commonalities that the two disciplines – medicine and the law – share. From first-hand experience, I know that the law can indeed draw much from what medicine has seen in trying to improve the human lot, from the physical (and now, increasingly, from the mental and social) ends.
As medicine does, the law looks at what bothers a person, and aims to provide relief. Read and used together, experiences and perspectives from the two disciplines can lead to more efficient, effective, creative, and perhaps most importantly, more humane solutions for the Judiciary’s long-standing problems and for those that its adjudication addresses.
From the perspectives of the reforms that the Judiciary may need, a lot can indeed be drawn from the lived realities and needs of the people that medical doctors deal with and see everyday. If the law really exists to give ample protection to those who have less in life, judges and justices must be at the front lines of giving this kind of protection, in particular, to the rights of the marginalized, the poor, women and sexual minorities, indigenous peoples, and the vulnerable.
I likewise found the chancellor’s ethics-centered approach that backstops his “joined hearts, minds and hands” logo, to be personally inspiring. I am very happy that within the last three months, Philja has started to reform its academic curriculum so that ethics and values now play a more central theme in our legal education and training (and hopefully, in our clienteles’ learning). The dispensation of justice, after all, translates to more than having legal knowledge and judicial skills; it also requires possessing the heart and mind of an arbiter of truth and fairness.
To cite an example, the clogged court dockets and prison congestion (two of Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo’s major concerns) may perhaps be addressed by focusing on the root cause of overlitigation of cases.
To appreciate this example, consider that 85 to 90 percent of the detained population are pre-trial detainees mostly involved with drugs. From my medical experience, I learned that incarceration is the most ineffective response to address risks related to drug use; people with problematic drug use are better diverted to community-based health systems. Instead of social justice, ineffective prison systems only destroy the future, the families and even the communities of people who use drugs.
Our judges, including our prosecutors, must therefore have the full capacity to maximize the use of rehabilitation as an option under our drug laws, and thereby promote the value of life, particularly family life. Diversion of drug cases to public health systems will radically decongest dockets and prisons,and uphold the true essence of reformative justice.
I also recall the 2014 Constitutional Law case of Imbong v. Ochoa that touches on the fundamental question, “When does life begin?” The Supreme Court deferred the resolution of this question of fact to the future, after proper trial.
(In the US where the Supreme Court intervened in the abortion issue via its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, abortion is still a live issue today , judging from the outcry raised by the US Supreme Court’s refusal to issue injunctive relief in the currently pending Texas abortion case.)
To be sure, present medical jurisprudence is increasingly becoming complex, especially in cases involving the handling of children, sex and gender, mental health, and medico-legal issues. Our judges and justices must be capable of expeditiously resolving factual questions by getting a head start on the medical concepts involved and in appreciating the principles behind the scientific method. Many legal disagreements are products of factual disputes that may be resolved by the proper understanding of the science behind these disputes.
Ultimately, much of the judicial reforms we envision in Philja may turn on the use of the “humanizing” approach. Time and again, the chancellor has stressed Philja’s “joined hearts, minds and hands” approach, not only in Philja but also for the whole judiciary, or perhaps for the whole country if our approach proves successful.
This approach can very well be one of the innovations we can use as a tool or guiding principle, particularly in these times when the future of the law and lawyering is undeniably multidisciplinary, and when disputes,many times, require a multi-party or collective approach. In any case, the Philja approach may pave the way for a Judiciary that is more dynamic, responsive and relevant to the needs of people – the unheralded and unseen parties to every case.