Philippine Law Journal

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History

Inception and early years

Established in 1914 under the guidance of the UP College of Law's founder and first dean, Justice George A. Malcolm, and the law faculty, the journal was designed as a vital training tool for law students, and modeled after the student-edited law reviews of American law schools. At its inception, the journal was distinctively the only English legal publication in the Orient.

The pioneer editorial board was composed of former Associate Justice Alexander Reyes as managing editor; Paulino Gullas as business manager; and Jose A. Espiritu, Victoriano Yamzon, and Aurelio Montinola as associate editors. The inaugural issue featured a message from Justice Malcolm, which encouraged students to publish and maintain a law journal that would stimulate discourse and disseminate legal knowledge.

The journal originally published nine issues per academic year. The issues contained legal articles, comments, and case reviews. They also contained write-ups on the University of the Philippines College of Law, including its social events and co-curricular activities, and the college's alumni. Frontispieces of Supreme Court justices and prominent practitioners were also featured in the earlier issues. The issues also contained commercial advertisements in order to generate income for the operations of the journal.

Recent history

In 2010, at the height of the disciplinary proceedings against the 37 faculty members of the College of Law who publicly spoke against the alleged plagiarism in Vinuya v. Executive Secretary, [1] the journal released a strong statement on defending legal scholarship.

While issues of the journal were, by then, available on the Internet for some time, in 2012 and 2013, a major push towards digitalization was made with the re-launch of the PLJ Website, containing an extensive archive of the Journal's published volumes. The ten-year digitalization project was heavily supported by Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio, who also sponsored the Special Maritime Issue of the journal, a continuing digital issue of the publication devoted to maritime law issues, particularly those surrounding the competing claims on the portion of the South China Sea known in the Philippines as the West Philippine Sea.

In 2014, the Centennial Year of the Journal, the publication was made available on HeinOnline, one of the world's biggest legal research services—a first for a Philippine law review—through the efforts of the College of Law and the UP Law Library. [2]

Editors

The journal is edited by a board of student editors under the supervision of a faculty adviser. A new board composed of sophomore, junior and senior students of the College of Law is formed annually, following a competitive examination graded by a committee of faculty members.

In its early years, members of the board were selected based on academic performance. The board composition varied according to the needs in a particular academic year. At that time, there was no chairperson. That position was created only in 1935, with Enrique Fernando being appointed as chairperson. Today, the members are selected on the basis of competitive examinations and academic qualifications. Until 2014, the board was composed of only eight members: a chair, vice-chair, and six editors. The number of editors was raised to eight in 2014. The students who rank first and second in the examinations serve as the chair and vice-chair, respectively. [2]

The issues of the journal are distributed to various legal and educational institutions in the Philippines and abroad, including the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Japan, India, China, Malaysia, South Africa, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil. The journal also maintains exchange arrangements with other law reviews, both domestic and foreign. [2]

Citations

Articles published in the journal have been cited in numerous decisions of the Philippine Supreme Court, including:

Alumni editors

More than a thousand former students and faculty members of the University of the Philippines College of Law have sat in either student or faculty editorial boards. Following contemporaneous law review tradition, the journal was likewise designed to be a training ground for legal scholars and practitioners of law. Many alumni editors have played important roles in shaping Philippine law, jurisprudence, and society, through their leadership in the judiciary, the government service, the academe, and the legal profession, both in the Philippines and abroad. [11]

Judiciary

Chief Justices

Associate Justices

Politics

Executive

Legislative

Constitutional Commission and other bodies

References

  1. ↑ "G.R. No. 162230". www.sc.judiciary.gov.ph. April 2010. Archived from the original on 2012-05-06. Retrieved 2014-11-19.
  2. 1 2 3 "Philippine Law Journal Online".
  3. ↑ "G.R. No. 191890". www.lawphil.net.
  4. ↑ "G.R. No. 181704". www.lawphil.net.
  5. ↑ "G.R. No. 143989". www.lawphil.net.
  6. ↑ "G.R. No. 160261". www.lawphil.net.
  7. ↑ "A.M. No. P-02-1651". www.lawphil.net.
  8. 1 2 "G.R. Nos. 105965-70". www.lawphil.net.
  9. ↑ "G.R. No. 135385". www.lawphil.net.
  10. ↑ Allan Chester Nadate, Constitutional Redemption and the Recognition of Indigenous Peoples Rights in a Transplanted Charter, 88 Phil. L. J. 640 (2014)
  11. ↑ Philippine Law Journal, "Centennial Celebrations Souvenir Program (2014), p. 11"
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