Column: Privilege, claim, power, immunity

Column No. 612. Also, Inquirer.net-declined-to-run-column No. 8. Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and on INQ Plus and Inquirer Mobile today, September 8, 2020. This is a layman’s explanation of a powerful analytic framework with which to understand freedom of expression and other rights—and, in passing, the self-censorship that is the voluntary ceding of that very right.

Wesley Hohfeld, an American lawyer who died in 1918 (quite possibly of the Spanish flu), created a powerful analytical system that allows a clearer understanding of rights. He identified four kinds of rights: the privilege, the claim, the power, and the immunity.

I will not attempt to explain his system in detail. This hundred-year-old analytical framework is new to me, and I still get lost in the technical thicket. I will only try to sum it up through a series of examples.

Here is my cell phone. It’s mine; I have rights to it.

I have the right to use it. In the Hohfeld system, that’s called a privilege (sometimes also called a liberty). I have the privilege, for instance, to send a Viber message on it to—what do you call a group of plant enthusiasts?—a pot, or a pothos, of “plantitos.”

Rethinking freedom of expression

Happy to join the Friedrich Naumann Foundation as it starts its second Learning Series, with a reflection on freedom of expression: What, exactly, is under threat, and what, exactly, is the nature of that threat? TO REGISTER, please click here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cgAqFfQwRPmlLN6Zzj5i5w

 

Column: 7 theses in the wake of Aquino’s outburst

Published on July 22, 2014.

The law is too important to be left to lawyers alone. Every citizen has the right to join a discussion involving legal issues, especially if the Constitution is at the heart of it. I am certain Fr. Ranhilio Aquino, dean of the San Beda Graduate School of Law and a constant critic of his namesake President, would agree. Like me, the columnist erroneously described as a priest-lawyer is not in fact a member of the Bar.

To be sure, as anyone can see from his biography posted on the Central Books website, he has at least two doctorates, including one in jurisprudence from a school in California.  But even if he didn’t (and this is the point), his commentaries would still be welcome. So perhaps that should be our first thesis, if we make a concerted attempt to understand President Aquino’s intemperate reaction to the Supreme Court’s adverse ruling on the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP): The law is too important to be left to lawyers alone.

Second thesis: The Aquino administration was right to file a motion for reconsideration, even though the possibility of reversal is small. I did not think it was worth it the week I read the ruling, but have since come to understand that the administration was bound to file the motion, for political reasons. The idea as I understand it is not simply to exhaust all legal remedies, but for the administration to rally the demoralized with a vigorous defense. The President’s speeches on July 14 and 15, however, were too aggressive, and rightly seen as threatening.