I HAVE been dean of the Graduate School of Law of San Beda University for over 20 years now, and for a long time, there was divagation on the part of those who did not like me or my ideas about why a non-lawyer should be allowed to direct a graduate school of law.

While I never had a doubt that there could really be no issue for those who wanted to think the matter through with logical precision, the Supreme Court wrote finis to all doubts in the Pimentel v. Legal Education Board case in 2019 and the resolution it promulgated in 2021, disposing of the motions for reconsideration that had been filed.

First, the high court ruled that graduate schools of law were free to admit non-lawyers and applicants who had not completed a basic law program into the Master of Laws program. Ruled the Court:

"Finally, the Court sustains its ruling that the prohibition against accepting applicants for the Master of Laws without a Bachelor of Laws or Juris Doctor degree under Section 17 of LEBMO No. 1-2011 is void for infringing the right of the school to determine who to admit to their graduate degree programs. This section provides:

"Section 17. Board Prerequisites for Admission to Graduate Programs in Law – Without prejudice to other requirements that graduate schools may lay down, no applicant shall be admitted for the Master of Laws (Ll.M.) or equivalent master's degree in law or juridical science, without an Ll.B. or a J.D. degree. Admission of non-members of the Philippine Bar to the master's degree shall be freedom vested in the graduate school of law. The candidate for the doctorate degree in juridical science, or doctorate in civil law or equivalent doctorate degree must have completed a Master of Laws (Ll.M.) or equivalent degree.

"Graduate degree programs in law shall have no bearing on membership or non-membership in the Philippine Bar.

"To recall, the Court held that such requirement 'effectively nullifies the option of admitting non-law graduates on the basis of relevant professional experience that a law school, pursuant to its own admissions policy, may otherwise have considered.'

"There is no monopoly of knowledge. Legal education would be more robust by allowing an engineer, a metallurgist, a businessperson, an agriculturist, and other graduates to further improve their crafts through this course. To note, it is also the general objective of RA 7662 to train persons for leadership and to contribute towards the promotion and advancement of justice and the improvement of its administration, the legal system, and legal institutions in light of the historical and contemporary development of law in the Philippines and other countries. Certainly, the pursuit of these objectives is not exclusive for law students or law practitioners."

And in respect to the qualifications of faculty members of colleges of law and graduate schools of law, the Court ruled:

"There is no question that the master's degree requirement for tertiary education teachers is permissible. This is settled. Here, what is unacceptable for being unreasonable is how the LEB exercised its authority to impose such requirement as discussed at length in the assailed decision. The issuances under consideration violate the law schools' right to set their own faculty standards and evaluate the qualifications of their teachers. In so doing, the LEB issuances infringe on the academic freedom of the schools to choose who may teach their students. While the State may act in furtherance of its role as parens patriae, it should not act like an overbearing parent who makes life choices for its adult child without regard to the latter's own choices or opinion."

This piece of jurisprudence marks the triumph of academic freedom. To be sure, our Supreme Court has consistently upheld the freedom of higher educational institutions as well as the freedom of scholars to pursue research, to publish their research, and to disseminate their findings and conclusions. But in this case, the Court virtually held the reins tightly on state intrusion in the form of regulatory action.

Not too long ago, the Commission on Higher Education and the Department of Budget and Management — the agencies that have habitually interfered with academic freedom — issued a "Joint Circular," or JC 3, that lays down the qualifications and requirements for different professorial ranks. This has made the matter of the classification and promotion of professors, not an inquiry into academic excellence and professorial competence but a mad rush to gather documents — the credentials by which this unenlightened circular has transformed what should be a purely academic matter into a bureaucratic process. That a university has the right to determine who should hold the rank of professor — the highest academic qualification one can attain — should be beyond cavil, but this latest, despicable attempt of CHEd and the DBM to stultify academic life is unconscionable. It is not a venial sin. It is a mortal sin against higher education institutions. The result is that some external agency now determines who holds varying academic ranks and titles!

I have long urged heads of universities and colleges to challenge the constitutionality of many, if not most of CHEd's intrusive and really captious memoranda and guidelines. Yet one more example of what is clearly unconstitutional is in order. CHEd determines which universities and colleges may accept trans-national or foreign students. In the Pimentel resolution, the Court ruled:

"The requirement regarding admission of international students is legally impermissible as the students' eligibility is strictly left for the LEB to decide. This unduly takes away the right of the academic institution to exercise its discretion whether to accept the student or not, thereby transgressing its academic freedom to determine who to admit."

If it is unconstitutional for the LEB to decide whether foreign students should be admitted or not, why should it be licit for the CHEd to do so? It will not do to be blasé in this respect, because a transgression of academic freedom remains a serious curtailment of a constitutionally guaranteed liberty, no matter how habituated we may have been to such a deprivation.

It is perhaps time to bite the bullet and accept academic freedom for what it fully guarantees. It has been my consistent position that the very existence and operation of CHEd rests on the specious assumption that there exists a body of bureaucrats that can effectively serve as pseudo-Platonic guardians over higher education. This vitiates the very concept of academic freedom. In the Separate Concurring and Dissenting Opinion of Justice Marvic Leonen is indicated the way we should in fact go:

"Allowing any form of State intrusion into academic freedom, such as creating a regulatory body like the Legal Education Board, results in a degree of homogeneity among institutions of higher learning. Imposing an admission requirement that schools must integrate into their own policies forces these institutions, as with the applicants, to fit a certain mold set by the State. It endangers these academic institutions' purpose of being spaces that encourage diverse and critical thinking. Academic freedom protects educational institutions from being confined to orthodoxies prescribed by the State, allowing professors and students to freely take part in critical discourse and scholarship. This function is frustrated when the State imposes its own policies and standards on universities and colleges. Laws and regulations can discourage heterodoxy by imposing 'a self-perpetuating academic establishment with identifiable standards for teaching and scholarship.' Standards may be imposed on faculty qualifications, methods of teaching, curriculum structure and procedure for admission."

rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph

rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph

rannie_aquino@outlook.com

Read The Rest at :