When judges and lawyers can sometimes get the law wrong, why should non-lawyers presume they know better?
And why should those who have spent years crafting laws resist being educated on how those laws are actually interpreted?
It is an odd habit of public debate that expertise is welcome only when it confirms what we already believe. The moment it becomes inconvenient, the expert acquires an “agenda.”
That seemed to be the fate of former Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang, presented by the prosecution in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte as an expert on laws governing ill-gotten, hidden, or graft-tainted wealth.
Cabotaje-Tang brought considerable experience to the witness stand. She spent 44 years in government as a lawyer and judge, teaches criminal law, and has served as a bar examiner in political law. If expertise means anything, hers ought to mean something.
And she did what an expert witness is supposed to do. She explained the law, its nuances, and how courts have interpreted it. She did not presume to decide Duterte’s case. Indeed, she said she had not devoted enough time to examining it.
That restraint should have been reassuring.
Instead, she was portrayed as a partisan with an axe to grind. She rejected the charge, answering not with political rhetoric but with the facts and the law.
“My testimony is not for sale,” she said in an even tone as her integrity came under fire.
Her explanation of unexplained wealth was equally instructive. Investigators can examine whether a public official’s statement of assets and liabilities is truthful and accurate, alongside lifestyle indicators and income tax records.
None of this requires agreement with the prosecution. It requires something more difficult: listening.
Education is not humiliation. Being corrected is not defeat. Even those who help write laws can benefit from learning how courts eventually read them.
If we are humble enough, education can do more than inform us.
It can edify us.
