The Hon. Abraham F. Sarmiento, Member of the UP Board of Regents (BOR) and former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, will address more than 4,000 graduates at UP Diliman’s 97th General Commencement Exercises on April 27, 3:30 p.m. at the University Amphitheater.
Sarmiento was appointed to the BOR by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on February 28, 2002. In addition to his present appointment, he currently chairs the BOR’s Committee on Legal Affairs. He was Ex-Officio Member of the BOR from July 1973 to July 1979 as president of the UP Alumni Association (UPAA).
Sarmiento earned an Associate in Arts in 1941 and a Bachelor of Laws in 1949, both degrees from UP. With his second degree, he was part of the first batch graduated by UP at Diliman, following the University’s transfer from its Padre Faura campus in the same year.
Admitted to the Philippine Bar on May 16, 1950, he is presently a member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, Philippine Bar Association and the Philippine Society of International Law. He began his professional career as a law clerk at the Paredes & Poblador Law Offices, later becoming assistant attorney at the Paredes, Balcoff & Poblador Law Offices. A year later, he became a managing partner at the Montano, Roxas & Sarmiento Law Offices. In 1972, he set up the Abraham Sarmiento Law Office.
In addition to being a practicing lawyer by profession, Sarmiento was also a strong and outspoken oppositionist to the Marcos Regime, being in forefront of the human rights movement during the Martial Law years. He founded and headed several organizations, some of which were the Philippine Organization for Human Rights (1978), National Union for Democracy and Freedom (1978), National Union for Liberation (1979-1982) and the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (1981-1983).
He also served as chief legal counsel for the Liberal Party and LABAN or Lakas ng Bayan Coalition. In 1984, he formed the Nationalist Alliance for Justice, Freedom and Democracy (NAJFD) with Sen. Lorenzo Tañada and other oppositionists to Marcos’ rule. The NAJFD was the forerunner of the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN).
On January 26, 1987, he was appointed Associate Justice to the Supreme Court of the Philippines by President Corazon C. Aquino. He retired on October 8, 1991 as Number 119 in the Roster of Supreme Court Justices of the Philippines since June 11, 1901.
However brief, his four years of service at the country’s highest judicial tribunal earned him numerous accolades for his achievements as a private citizen, a public servant and member of the judiciary, and for his advocacy and passion in upholding human rights and civil liberties.
Among these distinctions were: Distinguished Service Award, given by the Protestant Lawyer’s League of the Philippines in August, 1992; the Scale Award for Judicial Excellence (1991) by the Supreme Court Assembly of Lawyer Employees, Inc.; Conscience of the Supreme Court and Defender of People’s Rights (1991) from KAPATID, Task Force Detainees, SELDA and GABRIELA; Lord Chancellor Emeritus (2001) by the Alpha Phi Beta Chancery Alumni Association, Inc.
The editorial in the October 8, 1991 Manila Bulletin aptly describes his legacy as: “He leaves behind him one of the most impressive and undoubtedly enduring legacies in the annals of Philippine jurisprudence. Justice Sarmiento championed the rights of the disadvantaged and marginalized citizenry against the mighty bureaucracies that they contented a giant….(He) will also be remembered for having voted to allow the return of former President Ferdinand Marcos under the constitutional guarantee of the right to travel and the liberty of abode. It did not matter that he found himself in the minority. What gave this opinion its extraordinary dimension was that the Justice lost a son, a highly gifted child, after he was imprisoned by the Marcos regime. Here was an opportunity to exact a just revenge. But sitting in Court, he had purified his heart of any dross of personal vindictiveness, believing no one should be a judge in his own cause or in the cause of his kinsmen and friends. Indeed, it is because of such strict adherence to the principles of the Constitution regardless of personal or partisan biases that the Supreme Court has proved a mighty bulwark of our constitutional stability in a time of uncertainty and turbulence.”