SUPREME COURT associate justice and literature alumnus Ramon Hernando urged aspiring lawyers to be guided by truth amid the lack of lawyers in the country during the 51st St. Thomas More lecture held Friday.
Hernando stressed that justice and truth cannot be separated because it is the acknowledgment of truth that leads to justice.
“My great hope is that I’d be able to inspire today majority of you [to] be part of the administration of justice. And when you are part of the bar already, please be guided by the praxis of justice and truth,” he told Artlets.
He also said it is important that there are those “assigned to judge” as people are prone to making errors that lead to injustice.
“We are weak in most circumstances. We do not think rationally or with good reason […] We have our emotions and our needs. In other words, we are really inadequate to fulfill some obligations and this will result in unjust situations.”
The associate justice added that the task of administering justice does not lie solely on the shoulders of judges and lawyers, but also on ordinary people.
Hernando also admitted that the justice system in the country is “broken” and can be fixed only if people realize that it needs to be fixed.
“If we will not fully embrace that proposition that our system is sick, then we cannot transform our justice system,” he said.
“The humility required to acknowledge the truth should lead to a just and good result. That, to me, is greater than transformation. It is being faithful to the truth,” he added.
The lecture, titled “The Praxis of Justice and the Transformative Power of Truth,” was organized by the Faculty of Arts and Letters and held at the Buenaventura G. Paredes, O.P. building. The St. Thomas More lecture is held annually to commemorate the Faculty’s patron saint. F
