In Legal Terms
Do we really own Scarborough Shoal
May 6, 2023
FIRST, let me define what a shoal is.
It is a sandbank or sandbar that makes the water around it shallow. For example, the former Engineer’s Island, now the Baseco (Bataan Shipping and Engineering Company) is a sandbar.
Flight is indicative of guilt
April 29, 2023
I HAVE been in trial practice for almost four decades, which means I have waited on judges for hours on end while reading tabloids until the information that they contained became stale news. This is my take on the highly controversial Arnolfo Teves Jr. case which is now headline material.
When Genocide was not a Crime
April 22, 2023
RAPHAËL Lemkin, a Jewish Polish lawyer, was the person who coined the word genocide. It came from the Latin words genus meaning race and cide meaning kill. Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people of a particular national, ethnic, racial or religious group for the purpose of destroying it.
I would have Invited the Pope
April 15, 2023
THE Holy See has announced Pope Francis I’s repudiation of the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which many centuries ago was invoked by the monarchs of Spain and Portugal to seize lands, which previously belonged to somebody else.
Faked Intimacy and the Game in the Name
April 8, 2023
THE abolition of the tobacco monopoly by virtue of a decree dated June 25, 1880 signaled the start of a heyday for would-be Chinese tobacco manufacturers.
Provenance and the venerable Maribel Ongpin
April 1, 2023
AT the height of the pandemic, I wrote a book about the brilliant architect, Andres Luna de San Pedro, the only child of the ill-fated Juan Luna and titled the book Luna, Arquitecto.
The Chinese opium den and the nature of mala prohibita
March 25, 2023
A LAW is malum prohibitum if it is wrong because the act is prohibited. Motive in crimes mala prohibita is immaterial. The defense of good faith is also unavailing. It is an offense that may not be inherently immoral but becomes so because its commission is declared illegal by law.
Too much learning is a dangerous thing
March 18, 2023
EMANUEL Lasker, a philosopher and World Chess Champion, postulated a hypothetical creature called the “macheide.” Lasker said that the “macheide” is a being whose senses are so sharpened by evolution and relentless struggle, that it always chooses the best way and methodology to perpetuate the success of its species.
Carmen Guerrero Nakpil’s Pen
March 11, 2023
THE National Artist F. Sionil Jose was a friend who was always obliging enough to write forewords for my books. He was like a gentle, elderly uncle who did not seem to mind exchanging ideas with me, sharing his life’s experiences during our long conversations at the top floor of his beloved bookshop, Solidaridad. I must have taken up so much of his writing time, but he was never impatient.
The Reed Tablemount
March 4, 2023
A TABLEMOUNT is a mountain or volcano with a flat top or summit that is found under the sea. It is also known as a guyot (pronounced as “gee-yow”), a name derived from the Swiss American geologist, Arnold Henry Guyot. Flat summits are usually more than 200 meters below sea level, and they are most abundant in the Pacific Ocean.