About two years ago, I wrote, in this column, that my dad, Justice Hilarion Lolarga Aquino, was winding up his term as pioneer chair of the Legal Education Board, the regulatory agency of all law schools. It turns out that he stayed on for two more years, by virtue of the settled hold-over doctrine, because no chairman had been appointed —until recently. Three days ago, Emerson Aquende, former dean of the Aquinas University School of Law and presently Integrated Bar of the Philippines governor for Albay, was sworn in by the Chief Justice as the second LEB Chair. Daddy was in attendance at his good friend’s swearing-in ceremony. He could not be more pleased to pass the baton to Emerson of whom he is very fond and whose self-effacing character, despite his excellence as a law professor and competence as an administrator, have been clear to all who have had the good fortune of working with him.
Not too many know the Legal Education Board. It does not supervise as many institutions as does the CHED, for one, and my father is not one to trumpet his achievements, or cause fanfare about his projects. But the nation has the right to be assured that public funds were not wasted on Dad’s salary and that of the members of the Board. I am sure that as he takes his leave of his colleagues and the members of his staff at LEB, sentiments of gratitude for the cooperation and respect that he received from other members of the Board fill his aging heart. Among these are retired Court Administrator Zinaida Elepano, professor Manny Riguera, Dean Fe Anonuevo and Ched’s Dr. Carmelita Yadao-Sison (herself a lawyer) who sits in representation of Chair Patricia Licuanan. Past members of the Board included Dean Antonio Abad and new lawyer Justin Sugcang, the first—and so far, only—student representative. Dad counts among the greatest blessings of incumbency wonderful, supportive and truly loving colleagues. On the family’s behalf, I sent them text messages of gratitude for having cooperated with my father, and I received from all of them very kind sentiments not only of esteem but affection above all for my father.
Among the first things Dad had to do was find LEB an office, after having managed to get the Board going in peripatetic fashion— moving as “informal settler” first from the Justices’ Lounge of the Court of Appeals, to one corner of the Philippine Judicial Academy. Soon after the appointment of other members, the LEB promulgated the Policies and Standards for Legal Education in the Philippines, achieving a splendid balance between the prescription of minimum standards and safeguarding the academic freedom of law schools to structure their own curricula. My father believes in reasonable regulation, but he is not a control freak—and one thing that law deans throughout the Philippines will long remember was his constant openness to dialogue and to consultation.
Centers of excellence in legal education received recognition—the law schools that had distinguished themselves particularly by their standing in Bar Examination results. And in one grand ceremony held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the LEB, in partnership with the Philippine Association of Law Schools—the association of law deans that has been the LEB’s invaluable partner—established the Law Professors’ Hall of Fame and recognized outstanding law professors. It also conferred posthumous honors on distinguished legal academics who have gone on ahead.
Visits of law schools were regular—and Dad did not allow his 80 and so years to stand in the way of personally visiting law schools, dialoguing with law deans, members of the faculty and with students. Schools with dismal records got warnings; some were sanctioned, but downgrading if not phasing out law schools has never been dad’s priority. It just is not part of his character. So hand-in-hand with a relentless enforcement of the promulgated policies and standards were seminars held nationwide, by region, for all law professors. In the first round of seminars, it was legal education—strategy, content, curriculum, delivery and innovation—that was the topic. Throughout these regional seminars law deans and professors not only sat to listen to lectures. They freely exchanged experiences with each other. Not only the lectures were valuable. The exchanges were fruitful, and LEB brought the seminars to the law schools and law professors where they were. In the second round, LEB took up the topic of Legal Education and Social Contexts. And once more, legal academics were invited to go beyond codal and statutory provisions as well as jurisprudence and to leave behind such crude techniques as rote memorization to be able to teach law in a “truly grand manner.” Last year, it was Asean Integration with which the regional seminars concerned themselves and what this meant for legal education. Law deans and professors dealt with the concept of Outcomes-Based Education as a possible paradigm for legal education in the Philippines. Recently, Dad caused the constitution of a committee of law deans to thoroughly re-work—beyond “patchwork repairs” the law curriculum in the Philippines.
Dad retired from the Judiciary as a justice of the Court of Appeals some years ago. He bows out now from the Legal Education Board and we his family stand tall in the confidence that he has served in his best lights, and leaves a legacy of honor and dedication. His is the satisfaction of the assurance that the work he and his colleagues have done will be wisely continued and improved on by Chairman Emerson Aquende who, without a doubt, has Daddy’s full support. My father may hobble a little now, and a cane is indispensable these days. But there is no stopping him—he looks forward to resuming what he had to leave off some years ago: teaching law, the passion of a lifetime!
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