Not too long ago, a distraught policeman sought my advice. He had been in the government service for over 20 years and was charged with having beaten up someone he was apprehending who had eluded apprehension repeatedly in the past and had jeered the policeman way past endurance. For this offense he was ordered dismissed from the service, his leave credits forfeited, his benefits denied him and his eligibility cancelled. It was wrong for a policeman to have laid his hands on a recalcitrant knave, but it was overkill to have inflicted on the policeman the bundle of penalties he received. Leave credits were earned through years of service. Why should they be forfeited by one offense? And how does one establish a credible balance between transgression and penalty?
That was supposed to have been the dispensation of justice—and that is just the trouble with justice. Lawyers hardly mention it and when they do, they treat it like some philosophical ideal without any practicable measure. In fact, one can ask the philosophical question that has always been raised in respect to penalty: How can reducing this policeman to penury in his old age better the lot of the beating victim—who was not totally undeserving of the manhandling he got?
Is it just, for example, to be so hospitable to all complaints and to vex hapless respondents with having to respond to all complaints by the preparation of counter-affidavits, memoranda and position papers? Would not justice demand rather the outright junking of what, on its very face, is pure fabrication, confabulation and oppression? Due process does not mean conceding every demand for the application of process—for processes can be, and have been abused. Congress is one venue for the abuse of process.
And in respect to Leila de Lima, while there is not much sympathy for her, does justice consist in pandering to the popular demand that she be kept behind bars—at this time? According to the Constitution, one can be denied bail only when one is charged with an offense warranting reclusion perpetua, or life imprisonment or death, when evidence of guilt is strong. So before anyone is denied bail, it must be known that the evidence against the accused is strong. In respect to De Lima, it is popularly perceived that the evidence is strong (which, in my own estimation, it is not!), but judicially that is not yet known. That is why there is such a thing as a bail hearing. But she is now being detained. And that then is justice?
Suum quicumque tribuere…to render unto each what is due him. Romans had a charming way of putting things because they were as good orators as they were lawyers! But, really, that formulation is question-begging for it leaves unanswered the crucial question: What is due another? A natural law theorist will readily answer: his rights. Rawls would answer: as wide a range of liberties as is compatible with a similar latitude for others!
While justice will, we hope, be found in just laws, justice must also be in the workings of the law and its institutions. This is the reason that equity and prudence are not peripheral issues. They are central to laws that purport to serve the end of justice—and they will involve the discernment, the exercise of discretion and the involvement of as much wisdom as the ministers of the law may be able to muster to deal with that all so elusive but all so necessary ideal—justice!
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
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