My son watched the impeachment proceedings with us.  After the first few days, he asked “Why does Miriam Defensor Santiago do that?”

“Do what?” I asked.

“You know, tell the lawyers off.  She insults them.”

My husband and I just laughed.  That is something professors in the UP College of Law do to all their students.

During a recess in the proceedings, my husband and I described our experiences in the UP College of Law.  My husband was actually a student of Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago and had great stories to tell.

I was not so lucky as my husband. Sen. Santiago taught only one semester the whole time I was in law school and she taught Constitutional Law 2.  I was still a freshman then, and so I was taking Constitutional Law 1.

To those who have never gone to the UP College of Law, Sen. Santiago’s “harangues” are not really ‘harangues.” This is normal for professors there.

1.Professors feel that they have to put freshmen in their proper place at the bottom of the intellectual ladder. This is easy to understand since freshmen are still aglow with the success of hurdling the entrance examinations and feel really good about themselves, not knowing that they still don’t know anything worthwhile as far as the law is concerned.

2.Professors feel it their obligation to toughen up their students for the day that they have to get up in front of a judge and argue.  They must get used to being insulted and questioned and told off, and all the while remain civil and unwavering in their legal posture.

3. Professors feel it their life’s work not only to teach law but also to form the students’ legal minds: that is, to think like lawyers, to argue like lawyers, and deport themselves as befitting their intellectual stature as lawyers.

4. Professors feel it their obligation to correct misinterpretations of the law.

5. Professors feel it their obligation to show students how wrong they are so that they will study more. They must show the students that all they have held onto so tenaciously is nothing compared with the enormous body of knowledge that they have before them that they have to ingest and imbibe.

6. Professors have no time to suffer fools.  Students who come unprepared are fools.  Lawyers who stand up in court without having thought through their case or without having done their homework and leg work are fools.

So my son asked: are the lawyers for the prosecution fools, then? Well, they may h ave been brilliant students, but they have certainly forgotten the first rule: know your facts, know how to elicit facts, know how to present those facts.

The prosecution team reminds me of freshmen in the UP College of Law: dazed, blinking uncomprehending, smiling sheepishly at being exposed for their ignorance.  All UP Law graduates have been there.  In fact, we have all been traumatized by that experience that we have all resolved never to find ourselves in the same position, ever.

In that sense, it worked.  We. the traumatized ex-students of the College of Law prepare ourselves before we come to court because we do not wish to appear as fools.  It is one thing to be a fool, another thing to feel like a fool, and it is quite another thing to be made to look a fool.

I pity the prosecution team, but, unless they shape up and hit the books, they will be remembered more for their foolishness than their legal prowess.  Even if Chief Justice Corona gets convicted, the members of the prosecution team will not be able to brag.  I certainly cannot imagine myself voting for them to be senators next year, even if they manage to get Corona convicted and booted out of office.

They do the UP College of Law a disservice, coming to the impeachment court unprepared.  They tarnish the intellectual reputation of UP Law coming to court without having thought things through.  Court cases are not won through press conferences.  If you think about it, this impeachment trial is really an intellectual battle between UP Law and the other Law school. There is far too much at stake than just the battle for the office of the Chief Justice here. The prosecution team declared war, by all means, come out with guns ablaze!