The bar exams redux Wednesday, Jul 11 2007 

Musings vcuyco 3:28 am

For the second time in my life, I’m reviewing for the bar examinations.  This time, the review is for the New York State bar exams.  For someone who vowed never to take the bar exams again after those grueling four Sundays in September nine years ago, the current exercise is akin to masochism.  But if you believe in the Creator, a Supreme Being, a Deity, or the Force, please say a little prayer for me.  Or if you don’t believe, then just wish me luck. 

As I write this, I’m already midway through my review classes.  Imagine trying to learn in less than two months material that normally takes three years to study and you can envisage the kind of a bind that I’m in.  I’ve enrolled in a review program that is so intense I’m starting to have multiple choice dreams.  Believe me, they’re not very sexy.  Incidentally, Chris wonders if I’m having any review done given the blogging that I’ve been doing lately.  Well, blogging is my way of getting away from the review, even if only for a few moments.

For once, I’m thankful for the Philippines’ being a copycat of the U.S.  (Now, indulge me and take a pause here and imagine Cherry Gil’s La Viña saying to Sharon Cuneta’s Dorina:  “You are nothing but a second rate, trying hard copycat!” sabay tapon ng tubig sa mukha in “Bituing Walang Ningning.” Or was it “Bukas Luluhod ang mga Tala”?  I know, I know.  It’s not very apropos.  But I just can’t resist it.)  Indeed, many Philippine legal concepts, especially in constitutional law, corporation law and the law on evidence, are U.S. transplants.  But major differences remain.  The Philippines took its civil law system from its Spanish colonizers, while the U.S. took its common law system from its English colonizers.  I would thus need to unlearn a lot of Philippine law to pass these exams.

There is one very striking difference between the Philippine bar exams and those in the U.S.  I don’t mean the fact that more than 50% of the points in the latter exams are from multiple choice questions.  I understand that the Philippine Supreme Court has commissioned a study on the possibility of including multiple choice questions in the purely essay Philippine bar exams.  So that point of difference will soon disappear.  The striking difference I’m referring to concerns the attitude towards the bar exams in both jurisdictions.  While the goal in the Philippines is to top the exams, in the U.S. it is merely to pass them. 

Apparently, performance in the bar exams here is not deemed a good indicator of how a person would perform in the legal profession.  Instead, law firms and other employers put a high premium on grade point average, class rank, and membership in law reviews.  But then again, as anyone who went to school could attest to, even grades could be deceptive.  For instance, I know people who “shopped” for teachers known for their generosity in giving grades.  On the other hand, I had classmates who purposely sought out good teachers even if they also happened to be miserly with grades. 

Justice Harry Blackmun’s grades at Harvard Law School were merely passing.  But he went on to write the decision in Roe v. Wade, arguably one of the most momentous decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.  So, high grades are not very good predictors of performance in the real world.  As for the bar exams, we are repeatedly told that a high rating is good but not required.  That apparently is something that the Philippines has yet to copy from the U.S.

 

Feeding the world to win the global war on terror Saturday, Jul 7 2007 

Politics , , , , vcuyco 3:25 am

The global war on terror should be waged not only in Afghanistan and other lands providing haven to terrorists but also in the hearts and minds of people everywhere.  Counter-terrorism strategies must consciously include efforts that distinguish the ways of peace-loving peoples from the methods of those who pursue their objectives through violence.  I believe part of those efforts should be intensified aid-giving to the world’s poorest countries, and not only when they are members of the UN Security Council, as indicated by a recent Washington Post report.

I was born and raised in a small town in the Philippines.  The town, Gamay (which literally means “small” in the local language), was poor and most of its inhabitants were subsistence farmers or fisherfolk.  In the 1970s and early 80s, the town was caught in the middle of a violent conflict between communist guerillas and government soldiers.  Today, the violence has abated but the town is still poor and people are still farming and fishing. 

One of the earliest memories of my childhood was being brought to the town’s feeding center where malnourished children were fed.  I remember with fondness the milk and pancakes that we were fed at the center twice a week.  I always looked forward to those trips to the center because milk and pancakes were a luxury in those early years of my life.  To this day I can still vividly recall the sacks containing the powdered milk and pancake mix.  They were brown bags of sturdy make printed with the words “From the American people” at the top, the US flag in the middle, and a picture of two hands joined in a handshake near the bottom. 

In grade school, I would learn that the feeding program was funded by US aid to the Philippines.  I would learn later that foreign aid is routinely used as a foreign policy tool to advance the donor’s interests.  In recent years, I learned that the current administration had been using aid to pressure poor countries to enter into bilateral non-surrender agreements with the US to avoid the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over Americans.   

Recipient countries, of course, know that aid usually comes with strings attached.  “No such thing as a free lunch” obviously applies even in foreign relations.  But when a country’s people are dying of hunger or rendered unproductive by sickness or malnutrition, foreign aid oftentimes takes on the attributes of manna from heaven.  That this particular manna comes with strings attached is often ignored due to the exigencies of the moment.  

It is commonplace that extreme poverty is oftentimes a precursor to violent social upheavals that threaten international peace.  It thus serves US interests, as defender of world peace, to address problems spawned by poverty, such as hunger and chronic malnutrition.  As the Brazilian president once put it, hunger is actually the worst weapon of mass destruction, claiming as it does millions of victims every year. 

One way of addressing poverty issues, and thereby helping maintain international peace, is by ensuring that poor people have access to food.  The US government is allocating $3 billion for the Millennium Challenge Corporation for 2007.  Even a small portion of that amount, if used to help feed the world’s hungry and malnourished people, will go a long way in maintaining peace and in winning the hearts of the world’s poor. 

My childhood experience is without doubt replicated in many other poverty-stricken areas of the world.  Even as I write this, malnourished children in poor countries are lining up for their milk and pancakes, courtesy of the US and other aid-giving countries.  Milk and pancakes are, of course, illustrative examples.  In reality, foreign aid is used for a lot of other social welfare services in the developing world:  access to clean and potable water, vaccination and primary health care, sexual and reproductive health, and access to primary education, among many other programs.  

Whatever the motivations of its giver, no one seriously doubts that foreign aid helps improve the lives of many people in the developing world.  For so long as conditions for granting aid do not lead to further impoverishment (such as when aid is tied to allowing the entry of business interests that destroy the local environment), more aid should be given to the poorest countries of the world.  Also, since foreign aid sometimes ends up in the pockets of unscrupulous rulers of poor countries, creative mechanisms (such as giving a portion of the aid directly to non-government and international institutions with demonstrated capacity for delivering needed services) should be adopted to ensure accountability and transparency in its use. 

In the end, America wins.  The US may not always get the undying gratitude of recipient governments, especially when they are coerced into doing something in exchange for aid.  However, the US can be assured of the enduring appreciation of the world’s poor who benefit from its aid.  I, for one, would always be grateful for the milk and pancakes from the American people.  Gratitude from the world’s poor may not be much in terms of US geopolitical interests, but surely it should help make Americans feel good about themselves and their government.