Dr. Jose P. Laurel and social justice

Title

Creator

Pedrosa, Pio

Language

English

Source

Panorama XIV (5) May 1962

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

About forty years ago, I had the privilege, as a student of government in the University of the Philip pines, to sit at the feet of the old master.' Having then been the central figure in the Fili pino - American controversy that had raged to critical and even racial proportions over the scope of supervision that Filipino government officials could exercise over their Ame rican subordinates, Dr. Jose P. Laurel had awakened our peo ple into a new consciousness of national dignity, into a new and emotionally charged pat riotic fervor. Personal contact with him at the time, and to the end of his days, was in spirational. He radiated in fluence that evoked deeper love of country and higher pride that one was a Filipino. ™ SOCIAL JUSTICE To Dr. Laurel, education had only one function: the pursuit of truth, honor and justice; and only one sublime and overriding purpose: the recognition and dignification of the human personality. Like a pure gem, his genius sparked from many facets. At the core of his preoccupations, however, regardless of the field of activity in which he might for the moment be en gaged, whether it was in edu cation, in legislation, in the administration and dispensa tion of justice, in directing the governmental machinery at the most painful chapter in our nation’s history, in his de fiant struggles against every imposition that would subvert May 1962 11 or denigrade the Filipino race, his central thought was the welfare and well-being of our common people. “After the sleep of genera tions”, he once wrote, “our common people are awaken ing to their birthright of hu man dignity, entitlement to a decent social status, and at tainment of a satisfactory level of livelihood. They are no longer content to remain poor and to appease hunger for ma terial sufficiency with uncer tain visions of blessedness in the after-life. They are dis posed to fight for mundane needs and comforts in the here and now. They are beginning to understand both the pro mise and the validity of the democratic system, with its inherent possibilities of nar rowing the gap between the misery of the farm tenant and the self-indulgent luxurious living of the absentee land lord, the political cacique or the merchant prince. More and more they are consciously demanding the fulfillment of democracy’s promise and the actual realization of its possi bilities.” Our Constitution directs that “the promotion of social justice to insure the well-be ing and economic security of all the people should be the concern of the State”. Because this precept was being proselytized by self seeking elements as establish ing the right, in the words of another Filipino immortal, Manuel L. Quezon, to be fed without working, to squat on property not one’s own, or to take other short-cuts to com petence, in the belief that the State owes every citizen a liv ing without effort on his part, it was Dr. Laurel, the emi nent jurist, sitting as a magis trate of the Supreme Court, who gave the definition that has become the classic pro nouncement on the nature of this constitutional mandate. “Social justice”, he wrote, “is the humanization of the laws and the equalization of social and economic forces by the State so that justice in its rational and objectively secu lar conception may at least be approximated. It means the promotion of the welfare of all the people, the adoption by the government of measures cal culated to insure economic stability of all the component elements of society, through the maintenance of a proper economic and social equili brium in the interrelations of the members of the commun ity ... . Social justice must be founded on the recognition of the necessity of interdepen dence among the diverse units of society and of the protec 12 Panorama tion that should be equally extended to all groups as a combined force in our social and economic life, consistent with the fundamental and paramount objective of the State of promoting the health, comfort and quiet of all per sons . . . This constitutional precept has been the guiding principle of our government since the implantation of the Govern ment of the Commonwealth twenty-seven years ago, and of the Republic since 1946. The war destroyed and nulli fied everything that had been accomplished prior to its out break, and it must be said that the first five years at least of the Republic should be consi dered largely the period of re construction and rehabilita tion from the destruction apd devastation of that war. In deed development projects were planned and implemen tation was started immediate ly after the liberation. But it is only in this past decade when measures to implement the development plans were freed of the preferential atten tion to the projects of recon structing and rehabilitating the nation’s economic life. We see all over the country that substantial progress has been made in agricultural pro duction, in industrial expan sion and diversification, in domestic and international trade, in capital formation, in technical and entrepreneural progress, in the ultilization of technological and scientific processes. At the same time we can not be blind to the stark real ities of poverty, insecurity, and misery among over whelming segments of our po pulation. We can not fail to see that the output of our de velopment efforts is being pro duced at a much lbwer pace than the growing demand for bare livelihood being genera ted in our increasing popula tion. It is Dr. Laurel again who paints for us a vivid picture of present conditions. He asks the same question: “How far has our Government succeed ed in its social justice func tions?” “The answer”, he said, “lies in the lips and hearts of the millions of unemployed who bitterly wonder why they are jobless when rich natural resources abound in their homeland; of the legions of graduates of secondary schools and colleges who tramp the streets and sidewalks and spend endless hours in wait ing rooms of business offices, looking for jobs that do not exist; of the thousands in the rural areas and in the slums of cities and towns whose (Continued on page 64) May 1962 13

pages

11-13

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