MEN of a certain age developed their idea of law around this grand tenet: those who have less in life should have more in law. On lawyers, our ideal was the Filipino version of the late Clarence Darrow, the "attorney for the damned" who was regarded by American legal analysts as the "greatest lawyer of the 20th century." Darrow's hourslong defense of evolution at the Scopes Monkey Trial is a legal classic, and the text of that defense is still being reprinted for its eloquent and methodical debunking of creationism.
The names of lawyers of yore — Estanislao Fernandez, Juan T. David, Dakila Castro, Jose W. Diokno, et al. — come to mind, and so were those younger than them who defied the martial law regime to defend those shunned by mainstream law that was afraid of the wrath of the martial law overlords. These included Joker Arroyo and Rene Saguisag, who shone in the legal light that was supposed to have been dimmed or snuffed out by martial law.
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