Should legal luminaries morph into legal mercenaries?

Ethics is a sine qua non in the legal profession.

Revisit that one-minute video clip on Reddit (r/ChicaPH) where former Supreme Court associate justices Antonio Carpio and Adolfo Azcuna were interviewed by Ronald Llamas and Richard Heydarian.

In the interview, the unflattering comments by the highly respected magistrates were more likely uncalled for, wanting in propriety and intellectual humility. Infused with sarcasm, their views gravitated around what kind of lawyer Sen. Rodante Marcoleta is. It’s of doubtful validity if indeed Marcoleta is fair game to these gentlemen fast drifting into the limbo of irrelevance.

For one, Carpio dismissed Marcoleta, in the caliber of lawyers, as “belonging to the lowest rung” — an utterance that was accompanied by loud chuckles and body language that betrayed the propriety expected of associate justices of such caliber.

For another, Azcuna answered with an ounce of mockery the question of Llamas of whether Marcoleta was a legal mind: “Marcoleta still hasn’t reached his comet.”

This metaphor graphically understated Marcoleta as being planets away in the galaxy of legal luminaries, like they professed to be. Incidentally, the two cannot even win in a local political contest, much less dream of becoming a senator of the Republic.”

If for the once respectable magistrates of the High Court Marcoleta is less than a legal luminary, on whose account will this add up? Can we suppose that both magistrates have an ax to grind against Marcoleta who has never delivered an unsavory if visceral remark against any of the two much-vaunted luminaries?

There’s a dire need to put this quite annoying online Reddit video in some context. In 2023, the Supreme Court approved what is known as the Code of Professional Responsibility and Accountability. Because this is precisely a values-based framework, it preaches such values as independence, propriety, fidelity, competence, diligence, equality, and accountability, among other normative guidelines for the various aspects of a lawyer’s conduct.

Clearly, these traits were missing entirely in the way Carpio and Azcuna quite cavalierly conducted themselves before a viewing universe. One wonders whether as so-called legal luminaries, they could have morphed into “legal mercenaries” over the course of time or in furtherance of whatever “third-way advocacy,” nay footprint, they wish to leave behind.

This piece intends no pun any more than the engulfing need to simply give unto Caesar what’s due him. No one must unleash derision unto one who has hardly even expected a scene of this disconcerting nature to be floating around.

It’s of little moment if Marcoleta is considered no legal luminary as gauged by those who once sat as magistrates on the High Tribunal. That disparaging video footage might have inflated their egos at the expense of a lowly senator perceived to champion the plight of the poor, unlettered, and underprivileged at this critical juncture of our collective life.

Instead of putting a well-meaning senator in disrepute, why not launch a grand debate between an underrated lawyer and ex-Supreme Court justices in order to up the ante and raise the level of discourse on such crucial themes as: a) the issue of the West Philippine Sea; b) the illegal custody of former president Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court in The Hague; c) the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte, d) flood control corruption?

The fundamental question at the fulcrum of legal luminaries and “legal mercenaries” is whether or not lawyers, judges, justices — being holders of law degrees and bar passers — are not deemed to be in the same league as legal professionals.

It’s grossly violative of the Code of Professional Responsibility and Accountability to discredit Marcoleta together with attorneys Jimmy Bondoc and Ferdinand Topacio as small-caliber officers of the court simply because the associate justices who said so self-gratifyingly deem themselves the legal eagles of the profession, absent well-defined parameters and benchmarks.

Give propriety and sobriety their fair time, please.