Law of Duterte Land | With Lian Buan

From July 2016 to December 2021, 427 human rights defenders were killed, 2,807 arrested, 1,161 jailed, and 1,367 raided, according to data from human rights group Karapatan. That sums up the war that President Rodrigo Duterte waged against dissent.

In this episode, justice reporter Lian Buan talks to lawyer Jobert Pahilga of Sentro para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (SENTRA) on what it was like to be a dissenter during the last six years of the Duterte administration, and their outlook for president-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs was unconstitutional, said retired supreme court senior justice Antonio Carpio, adding it’s the one policy of the last six years “that should be redressed.”

In this episode of Law of Duterte Land, we discuss estate tax more extensively with tax lawyer Jean Francois “Punch” Rivera III, the assistant national treasurer of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP).

Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr.’s spokesman Vic Rodriguez continues to insist that the case is pending, even though Supreme Court records show that the 1997 ruling is final and unappealable, and became executory in 1999. Rodriguez said it’s because there are still pending ill-gotten wealth cases, even though the Supreme Court in 1997 already said they have no bearing on the assessment. Both the BIR and the Department of Finance confirmed trying to collect from the Marcoses to no avail.

How come a powerful family is able to go on without paying this much tax?

With so much confusion and misinformation about the unpaid P203-billion estate tax of the Marcoses, we digest the issue with a taxation law expert in the easiest way possible.

In this episode, Rappler justice reporter Lian Buan talks with lawyer Mickey Ingles, who teaches tax law at Ateneo Law School and who authored the book 'Tax Made Less Taxing'.

In this episode of the Law of Duterte Land podcast, Lian Buan speaks to Fernando Peñarroyo, Integrated Bar of the Philippines' presidential adviser on energy, who said that for the group, it is more sound for the government to instead take up the 90% shares of Shell and Chevron instead of allow it to be transferred to Dennis Uy's subsidiaries.

Is it time for the Philippines to pass its own memory law that would prohibit denial of the atrocities of the Marcosian martial law?

Lawyers Raphael Pangalangan, Gemmo Fernandez and Ross Tugade discussed it in their 2018 paper "Marcosian Atrocities: Historical Revisionism and the Legal Constraints on Forgetting." They sit down with Lian Buan in this episode of Law of Duterte Land podcast.

Now that the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor has been authorized to seek evidence to potentially request a warrant of arrest for President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war and the Davao City killings, what happens then? Lian Buan talks to Filipino international human rights lawyer Emerlynne Gil, the deputy regional director for research of Amnesty International.

Listen to this episode as we unpack how the justice system, for all its good intentions of due process for all, has fueled the culture against impunity

We talk to International Law expert Professor Andre Palacios for this episode

In this episode, Rappler's Lian Buan talks to constitutional expert and retired Supreme Court justice Vicente V. Mendoza, who says Duterte can run for vice presidency, and can also succeed as president – if the new president who wins in 2022 resigns.

In this episode, Rappler's Lian Buan talks to former justice undersecretary Jose "JJ" Justiniano, who was a deputized prosecutor in the pork barrel scam cases which were started by the Aquino government. 

We talk to Param-Preet Singh, associate director of the Human Rights Watch International Justice Program 

In this episode, we catch up with Angelo Karlo "AK" Guillen and talk about what it's like to be a lawyer facing an immense threat, as he survived an attempt on his life.

Where do lines blur, between national security and civil liberties, and between protected and seditious speech?

For this episode, Lian Buan talks to NTF-ELCAC spokesperson Marlon Bosantog, who is part of the task force's legal cooperation cluster on the laws involved in hunting down their perceived communists.

This episode is a recap of all the 9 sessions of the anti-terror law oral arguments in the Supreme Court, and how Captain Ri – a fictional character inspired by the hit Korean drama Crash Landing on You – embodied the fundamental issue of the law. What is the balance between personal freedoms and national security?

In this episode, we conduct a deep dive into the crazy world of electoral protests, and why Bongbong Marcos' annulment of elections bid in 3 Mindanao provinces failed. Rappler's justice reporter Lian Buan talks to former Comelec commissioner Luie Guia, who says what we have is an underdeveloped jurisprudence on annullment of elections.

In this episode, we talk to former justice assistant secretary Geronimo Sy, who was chairman of the criminal code committee during his time in the Department of Justice, about how to balance criminal laws and common sense governance in this pandemic.

In this episode we will talk about the process of choosing who gets to sit on the Supreme Court Bench, and whether the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) is accountable for appointees who turn out bad.

This disproportionate number and an alarming surge at that have compelled lawyers to call on the Supreme Court – exercise your extraordinary powers to respond to this extraordinary problem. For them, this is no time to be passive.

In this episode, we talk to lawyer Carlo Brolagda of the group IDEALS, or the Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services (IDEALS), which is the latest group to investigate the drug war.