Juris Doctor (see etymology and abbreviations below) is a first professional graduate degree and professional doctorate in law. The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree (such as the Dottore in Giurisprudenza in Italy and the Juris Utriusque Doctor in Germany and Central Europe). Originating from the 19th century Harvard movement for the , it is a law degree that in some common law jurisdictions has a goal of being the primary professional preparation for lawyers. It is a three year program in most jurisdictions. As with other professional doctorates (M.D., D.O., D.D.S., etc.), a research dissertation is not required.

Etymology and abbreviations

The degree is conferred in Latin as "Juris Doctor" (abbreviated J.D.) or in English as "Doctor of Law" or "Doctor of Jurisprudence"(abbreviated J.D. or D. Jur.).

Historical context

Origins of the law degree

In Europe the first academic degrees were law degrees, and the law degrees were doctorates. The foundations of the first universities were the glossators of the 11th century, which were schools of law. The first university, that of Bologna, was founded as a school of law by four famous legal scholars in the 12th century who were students of the glossator school in that city. The University of Bologna served as the model for other law schools of the medieval age. While it was common for students of law to visit and study at schools in other countries, such was not the case with England because of the English rejection of Roman law (except for certain jurisdictions such as the Admiralty Court) and although the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge did teach canon law until the English Reformation, the importance of common law was always superior to civil law in those institutions.

The history of legal training in England

of London served as a professional school for lawyers in England]]

The nature of the J.D. can be better understood by a review of the context of the history of legal education in England. The teaching of law at Oxford University was for philosophical or scholarly purposes and not meant to prepare one to practice law. Professional training for practicing common law in England was undertaken at the Inns of Court, but over time the training functions of the Inns lessened considerably and apprenticeships with individual practitioners arose as the prominent medium of preparation. However, because of the lack of standardization of study and of objective standards for appraisal of these apprenticeships, the role of universities became subsequently of importance for the education of lawyers in the English speaking world. The original method of education at the Inns of Court was a mix of moot court-like practice and lecture, as well as court proceedings observation. By the seventeenth century, the Inns obtained a status as a kind of university akin to the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, though very specialized in purpose. With the frequent absence of parties to suits during the Crusades, the importance of the lawyer role grew tremendously, and the demand for lawyers grew.

Traditionally Oxford and Cambridge did not see common law as worthy of study, and included coursework in law only in the context of canon and civil law and for the purpose of the study of philosophy or history only. The apprenticeship program for solicitors thus emerged, structured and governed by the same rules as the apprenticeship programs for the trades. The training of solicitors by apprenticeship was formally established by an act of parliament in 1729. William Blackstone became the first lecturer in English common law at the University of Oxford in 1753, but the university did not establish the program for the purpose of professional study, and the lectures were very philosophical and theoretical in nature.

The Inns of Court continued but became less effective and admission to the bar still did not require any significant educational activity or examination, therefore in 1846 Parliament examined the education and training of prospective barristers and found the system to be inferior to the legal education provided in Europe and the United States. Therefore, formal schools of law were called for, but not finally established until later in the century, and even then the bar did not consider a university degree in admission decisions. Due to an initial distrust of a profession open only to the elite in England, as institutions for training developed in what would become the United States they emerged as quite different than those in England.

Initially in the United States the legal professionals were trained and imported from England. A formal apprenticeship or clerkship program was established first in New York in 1730—at that time a seven-year clerkship was required, and in 1756 a four-year college degree was required in addition to five years of clerking and an examination. Later the requirements were reduced to require only two years of college education. The student was supposed to compile his notes of his reading of the law into a "commonplace book", which he would try to memorize. Although those were the ideals, in reality the clerks were often overworked and rarely were able to study the law individually as expected. They were often employed to tedious tasks, such as making handwritten copies of documents. Finding sufficient legal texts was also a seriously debilitating issue, and there was no standardization in the books assigned to the clerk trainees because they were assigned by their mentor, whose opinion of the law may have differed greatly from his peers. It was said by one famous attorney in the U.S., William Livingston, in 1745 in a New York newspaper that the clerkship program was severely flawed, and that most mentors "have no manner of concern for their clerk's future welfare... [T]is a monstrous absurdity to suppose, that the law is to be learnt by a perpetual copying of precedents." The apprenticeship programs often employed the trainee with menial tasks, and while they were well trained in the day to day operations of a law office, they were generally unprepared practitioners or legal reasoners. The establishment of formal faculties of law in U.S. universities did not occur until the latter part of the 18th century. With the beginning of the American Revolution, the supply of lawyers from Britain ended. The first law degree granted by a U.S. university was a Bachelor of Law in 1793 by the College of William and Mary, which was abbreviated L.B.; Harvard was the first university to use the LL.B. abbreviation in the United States.

The first university law programs in the United States, such as that of the University of Maryland established in 1812, included much theoretical and philosophical study, including works such as the Bible, Cicero, Seneca, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Montesquieu and Grotius. It has been said that the early university law schools of the early 19th century seemed to be preparing students for careers as statesmen rather than as lawyers. At the LL.B. programs in the early 1900s at Stanford University and Yale continued to include "cultural study," which included courses in languages, mathematics and economics.

In the 1850s there were many proprietary schools which originated from a practitioner taking on multiple apprentices and establishing a school and which provided a practical legal education, as opposed to the one offered in the universities which offered an education in the theory, history and philosophy of law. The universities assumed that the acquisition of skills would happen in practice, while the proprietary schools concentrated on the practical skills during education. U.S. Supreme Court justice Joseph Story started the spirit of change in legal education at Harvard when he advocated a more "scientific study" of the law in the 19th century. At the time he was a lecturer at Harvard. Therefore at Harvard the education was much of a trade school type of approach to legal education, contrary to the more liberal arts education advocated by Blackstone at Oxford and Jefferson at William and Mary. Nonetheless there continued to be debate among educators over whether legal education should be more vocational, as at the private law schools, or through a rigorous scientific method, such as that developed by Story and Langdell. In the words of Dorsey Ellis, "Langdell viewed law as a science and the law library as the laboratory, with the cases providing the basis for learning those 'principles or doctrines' of which law, considered as a science, consists. Nonetheless, into the year 1900 most states did not require a university education (although an apprenticeship was often required) and most practitioners had not attended any law school or college. implementing elements such as clinical training, which has become an essential part of legal education in the U.S. and in the J.D. program of study. Whereas in the 18th and 19th century, few U.S. lawyers trained in an apprenticeship "achieved a level of competence necessary to adequately serve their clients," today as a result of the development of the U.S. legal education system, "law graduates perceive themselves to be prepared upon graduation" for the practice of law.

Creation of the J.D. and major common law approaches to legal education

The J.D. originated in the United States during a movement to improve training of the professions. The didactic approaches which resulted were revolutionary for university education and have slowly been implemented outside the U.S., but only recently (since about 1997) and in stages. The degrees which resulted from this new approach, such as the M.D. and the J.D., are just as different from their European counterparts as the educational approaches differ.

Legal education in the United States

Professional doctorates were developed in the United States in the 19th century, the first being the Doctor of Medicine in 1807, but the professional law degree took more time. At the time the legal system in the United States was still in development as the educational institutions were developing. The status of the legal profession was at that time still ambiguous, therefore the development of the legal degree took much time. Even when some universities offered training in law, they did not offer a degree. At first the degree took the form of a B.L. (such as at the College of William and Mary), but then Harvard, keen on importing legitimacy through the trappings of Oxford and Cambridge, implemented an LL.B. degree. This was somewhat controversial at the time because it was a professional training without any of the cultural or classical studies required of a bachelors degree in England. Thus, even though the name of the English LL.B. degree was implemented at Harvard, the program in the U.S. was nonetheless intended as practical or professional training, and not, as in England, merely a bachelor of arts denoting a specialization in law.

Creation of the Juris Doctor

In the mid-19th century there was much concern about the quality of legal education in the United States. Christopher Columbus Langdell, who served as dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895, dedicated his life to reforming legal education in the United States. The historian Robert Stevens wrote that "it was Langdell's goal to turn the legal profession into a university educated one—and not at the undergraduate level, but through a three-year post baccalaureate degree." This graduate level study would allow the intensive legal training that Langdell had developed, known as the case method (a method of studying landmark cases) and the socratic method (a method of examining students on the reasoning of the court in the cases studied). Therefore, a graduate high level law degree was established, the Juris Doctor, implementing the case and socratic methods as its didactic approach. The J.D. was established as the equivalent of the J.U.D. in Germany to reflect the advanced study required to be an effective lawyer. It was not a conversion of the LL.B. degree, but a graduate degree to be distinguished from undergraduate programs. Harvard was first to offer the new doctorate. The University of Chicago Law School was the first to offer it exclusively (i.e., the first to not offer both the J.D. and the LL.B.). While approval was still pending at Harvard, the degree was introduced at many other law schools in the United States.

Because of tradition, and concerns about less famous universities implementing a J.D. program, there was some reluctance by some institutions, such as Yale Law School, to implement the J.D. as the only law degree. By the 1960s every law school except Yale offered a J.D. as its sole professional law degree. Yale continued to confer the LL.B. as its professional degree in law until 1971. Both barristers and solicitors must undertake two further periods of training (the Bar Vocational Course and pupillage for barristers and the LPC and a training contract for solicitors).

The bachelor's degree originated at the University of Paris, which system was implemented at Oxford and Cambridge. The "arts" designation of the degree traditionally signifies that the student has undertaken a certain amount of study of the classics. On continental Europe the bachelor's degree was phased out in the 18th or early 19th century but it continued at Oxford and Cambridge. Today Oxford offers the bachelor's degree in law (B.C.L.) as a second entry program, contrary to the practice of all other English universities. Cambridge followed the same practice until relatively recently, renaming its LL.B. degree as LL.M. in 1982.

Because the English legal education is undergraduate and provides a general education (retaining some of the characteristics of the liberal arts degree advocated by Blackstone) a great number of the graduates have no intention of becoming solicitors or barristers. The approach of the English degree can be seen in the required curriculum, in which there is no study of civil procedure, and relatively few courses in advanced law such as business entities, bankruptcy, evidence, family law, etc. There has been a trend in the past twenty years in England to introduce more professionally relevant courses in the curriculum, particularly in "qualifying law degrees," and the law school has taken a more central role in the preparation of lawyers in England, The education in law schools in Canada was similar to that in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, but with a greater concentration on statutory drafting and interpretation, and elements of a liberal education. The bar associations in Canada were influenced by the changes at Harvard, and were sometimes quicker to nationally implement the changes proposed in the United States, such as requiring previous college education before studying law. This has proven true in the context of the various forms of the J.D. which have been implemented around the world.

Until about 1997 the J.D. was unique to law schools in the U.S. But with the rise in international success of law firms from the United States, and the rise in students from outside the U.S. attending U.S. law schools, attorneys with the J.D. have become increasingly common internationally. Therefore the prestige of the J.D. has also risen, and many universities outside of the U.S. have started to offer the J.D., often for the express purpose of raising the prestige of their law school and graduates. ! Jurisdiction !! Scholarly Content Required? !! Duration in Years !! Different curriculum from LL.B. in Jurisdiction? !! Sufficient Education for License? |- ! United States | No || 3 || Yes || Yes |- ! Australia | Yes || 3 || No || No |- ! Canada | No || 3 || No || No |- ! Hong Kong | Yes || 2–3 || No || No |- ! Japan | No || 3 || N/A || No |- ! Philippines | Yes || 4 || Yes || Yes |}

Types and characteristics

Until very recently, only law schools in the United States offered the Juris Doctor. Starting about 1997, universities in other countries began introducing the J.D. as a first professional degree in law, with differences appropriate to the legal systems of the countries in which these law schools are situated.

Standard Juris Doctor curriculum

As stated by James Hall and Christopher Langdell, two people who were involved in the creation of the J.D., the J.D. is a professional degree like the M.D., intended to prepare practitioners through a of analysing and teaching the law through logic and adversarial analysis (such as the Casebook and Socratic methods). It has existed as described in the United States for over 100 years, and can therefore be termed the standard or traditional J.D. program. The J.D. program requires a bachelors degree for entry. The program of study for the degree has remained substantially unchanged since its creation, and is an intensive study of the substantive law and its professional applications (and therefore requires no thesis, although a lengthy writing project is sometimes required). As a professional training, it provides sufficient training for entry into practice (no apprenticeship is necessary to sit for the bar exam). It requires at least three academic years of full time study. Strictly defined, the United States is the only jurisdiction with this form of a J.D., but the University of Tokyo (in Japan) and the University of Melbourne (in Australia) are attempting to follow this model closely.

For graduates of other departments

There has been an increase in the popularity of entering the professions, and to meet this demand some schools offer a program for students who have already graduated from another department to return to school to earn a law degree. Many of the participants in this kind of program already have some work experience. The best example of this form are the J.D. programs in Hong Kong and some in Australia. Those programs are more or less identical to the LL.B. programs, except they are usually more intensive and thus take less time to complete. Because such programs are essentially an LL.B. program, this kind of program is academic in nature, shorter than other J.D. programs, and more training is required before a graduate is qualified to apply to the bar for admission (such as Professional Legal Training and an apprenticeship).

Replacement for the LL.B.

Canadian and Australian universities have law programs that are very similar to the J.D. programs in the United States. These include University of Victoria, University of Calgary, the Osgoode Hall Law School and University of Toronto Law School (in Canada) in Canada, and the University of Melbourne in Australia. Therefore, when the J.D. program was introduced at these institutions, it was a mere re-naming of their second-entry LL.B. program and entailed no significant substantive changes to their curricula. The reason given for so doing is because of the international popularity and recognizability of the J.D., and the need to recognize the demanding graduate characteristics of the program. Because these programs are in institutions heavily influenced by those in the UK, the J.D. programs often have some small scholarly element (see chart above, entitled "Comparisons of J.D. Variants"). And because the legal systems are also influenced by that of the UK, an apprenticeship is still required before being qualified to apply for a license to practice (see country sections below, under "Descriptions of the J.D. outside the U.S.").

Descriptions of the J.D. outside the U.S.

Australia

An undergraduate degree is required for admittance to all J.D. programs in Australia, though both the J.D. and LL.B. programs are often combined with an arts degree (BA/LL.B or BA/JD) and can be completed in five years. The J.D. is being offered at an increasing number of universities, and the University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, Australian National University, Bond University, University of Southern Queensland, University of New England, University of Melbourne, Monash University, RMIT University, Murdoch University, University of Technology Sydney, and the University of Notre Dame Australia now offer the J.D., usually for graduates from non-law programs who wish to study law. At the University of Melbourne, the J.D. degree has completely replaced the LL.B. as the degree of law.

An Australian Juris Doctor lasts two or three years full-time and the courses, though both J.D. and LL.B. cannot be licensed to practice until after completing an articled clerkship program or practical legal training course. University of Technology Sydney offers Practical Legal Training as part of their J.D. program enabling direct admission upon graduation. Bond University offers a J.D. program that has core requirements that are identical to the LL.B. However, Bond University J.D. students are also required to complete five masters level elective subjects, making the Bond University J.D. program resemble an integrated Bachelor's and Master's degree. Even more unusual is the "LL.M. (J.D.)" at Monash University, which is the same as the Bond University program, and that institution also states that their degree is not a professional doctorate.

Canada

The LL.B. is still the dominant law degree in Canada, although as a second-entry program, and an increasing number of schools have replaced it with the J.D. degree. As with the LL.B., in order to be admitted to a Juris Doctor program, applicants must have completed a minimum 3-year Bachelor's study. However, as a practical matter, nearly all successful applicants have completed one or more degrees before admission to a Canadian law school. All Canadian Juris Doctor programs consist of three years, and have similar content in their mandatory first year courses. As with U.S. J.D. programs, such as that of the New York University Law School, the mandatory first year courses in Canadian law schools outside Quebec include "public" "constitutional" or "state" law, tort law, contract law, criminal law, and some sort of "professional practice" course. Beyond first year and the minimum requirements for graduation, course selection is elective with various concentrations such as business law, international law, natural resources law, criminal law, Aboriginal law, etc. After graduation from an accredited law school, each Province's law society requires completion of a bar examination, and a period of supervised "articling" prior to independent practice.

Use of the "J.D." designation by Canadian law schools is not intended to indicate an emphasis on American law, but rather to distinguish Canadian law degrees from English law degrees, which do not require prior undergraduate study nor offer practical legal training. do not recognize Canadian Juris Doctor degrees automatically. This is equivalent to the manner in which United States J.D. graduates are treated in Canadian jurisdictions such as Ontario. To prepare graduates to practise in jurisdictions on both sides of the border, some pairs of law schools, such as the New York University (NYU) Law School and Osgoode Hall Law School, the University of Ottawa Law School and the Michigan State University Law School, and the University of Windsor Law School and the University of Detroit Mercy Law School, have developed joint American-Canadian J.D programs.

Hong Kong (S.A.R. of China)

The primary law degree in Hong Kong is the LL.B., which is more or less identical to the LL.B. in England. The J.D. degree is currently offered at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the City University of Hong Kong, and the University of Hong Kong. The degree is known as the 法律博士 in Chinese, and in Cantonese it is pronounced as Faat Leot Bok Si. The J.D. in Hong Kong is almost identical to the LL.B. and is reserved for graduates of non-law disciplines, but the J.D. is considered to be a graduate-level degree and requires a thesis or dissertation. Like the LL.B. there is much scholarly content in the required coursework. Although the universities offering the degree claim that the J.D. is a two-year program, further study of their website reveals that completing the degree in two years would require study with no summer break. There seems to be much confusion of the role or status of the J.D. in Hong Kong, as the City University website states that their J.D. is not a doctorate. Neither the LL.B. nor the J.D. provides the education sufficient for a license to practice, as graduates of both are also required to undertake the PCLL course and a solicitor traineeship or a barrister pupillage.

Japan

In Japan the J.D. is known as Homu Hakushi (法務博士) and has replaced the bachelor of law as the first entry law degree. The program generally lasts three years. This curriculum is professionally oriented, but does not provide the education sufficient for a license, as all candidates for a license must attend the Legal Training and Research Institute.

Philippines

In the Philippines, the J.D. exists alongside the more common LL.B. Like the standard LL.B, it requires four years of study, is considered as a graduate degree and requires prior undergraduate study as a prerequisite for admission, and covers the core subjects required for the bar examinations. However, the J.D. requires students to finish the core bar subjects in just 2½ years; take elective courses (such as legal theory, philosophy, and sometimes even theology); undergo an apprenticeship; and write and defend a thesis. Notwithstanding these differences, both the J.D. and the LL.B. are considered the equivalent of a master's degree by the Philippines' Commission on Higher Education.

The degree was first conferred in the Philippines by the Ateneo de Manila Law School, which first developed the model program later adopted by most schools now offering the J.D.. After the Ateneo, schools such as the University of Batangas College of Law began offering the J.D., with schools such as the Far Eastern University Institute of Law offering a joint degree program leading to a J.D. and an MBA. In 2008, the University of the Philippines College of Law began conferring the J.D. on its graduates, the school choosing rename its LL.B. program into a J.D. because to accurately reflect the nature of education the university provides as "nomenclature does not accurately reflect the fact that the LL.B. is a professional as well as a post baccalaureate degree." In 2009, the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM) and the Silliman University College of Law also shifted their respective LL.B Programs to Juris Doctor -applying the change to incoming freshmen students for School Year 2009–2010. The newly established De La Salle University College of Law will likewise offer the J.D., although it will offer the program using a trimestral calendar, unlike the model curriculum that uses a semestral calendar.

Others

China

J.D.'s are not awarded in the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) as the government does not authorize professional doctorates. The primary law degree in the P.R.C. is the bachelor of law. In the fall of 2008 the Shenzhen campus of Peking University started the School of Transnational Law, which offers a U.S.-style education and awards a masters degree. The school claims in a translation of an official document that the State Council has curiously granted permission for the masters degree to be translated into English as a "J.D." degree, however the original document makes no such statement.

India

At this time the Juris Doctor does not exist in India; no official entity in India authorizes the award of such a degree. A new venture Jindal Global Law School sought to start an academic program with a recognized Juris Doctor degree, however that plan was withdrawn, and the school now only offers the more traditional LL.B. and LL.M. degrees.

Italy

No university in Italy awards a Juris Doctor degree, nor are there any plans to implement the degree. However, because the law degree in Italy is more advanced than a standard undergraduate program, and lawyers in Italy often use the title of "doctor" (Italian law authorizes all university graduates, including undergraduates, to use the title of doctor) lawyers in Italy believe that the best translation of their degree is "J.D." which commonly appears on their resumes and profiles.

Executive Juris Doctor

The Executive Juris Doctor is not widely received or accredited. It is only awarded by two distance education universities in the United States. Concord Law School claims trademark rights to the EJD acronym, the only degree that has had a trademark claim (the purpose of a trademark is to reserve exclusive use for economic benefit). The program is offered by the online universities of Concord Law School of Kaplan University and Taft Law School of The Taft University System. Both institutions are accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), but not the American Bar Association. Concord Law School is Regionally accredited. The program requires three years of study and 72 semester units. Advanced research degrees in the study of law include the Master of Laws (LL.M.), which ordinarily requires the J.D. or LL.B. as a prerequisite, and the Doctor of the Science of Law (S.J.D./J.S.D.), which ordinarily requires the LL.M. as a prerequisite. advising that the J.D. be considered as being equivalent to the Ph.D. for employment and educational purposes, the United States Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the European Research Council do not include the J.D. or other professional doctorates among the degrees that are equivalent to research doctorates, and there has been some confusion regarding the differences between the J.D. as a professional doctorate and research doctorates such as the Ph.D., with some sources noting that they are not equivalent.

See also

Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L) or (LL.L)

Bachelor of Laws (LL.B)

Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D. or S.J.D.)

Legum Doctor (LL.D)

Master of Laws (LL.M)

Legal education

Admission to practice law

Accelerated JD program

Law degree

Law school in the United States - describes general characteristics of the J.D. curriculum in the U.S.

Lawyer

Notes and references

Law degrees Category:Law degrees

Gerard Nash (born 11 July 1986 in Leixlip, County Kildare) was an Irish professional footballer. Nash played his youth football at the famous Belvedere FC. He was forced to retire due to complications occurring after two cruciate ligament injuries. He played for Ipswich Town and also spent time on loan at Hartlepool United and Southend United. Currently employed as a full-time coach with Ipswich Town.

He also plays as centre-back for non-league Woodbridge Town and Ipswich Town Reserves.

External links

Gerard Nash squad profile on Ipswich Town FC website

Category:1986 births Category:Living people Category:Republic of Ireland association footballers Category:Ipswich Town F.C. players Category:Hartlepool United F.C. players Category:Southend United F.C. players Category:People from County Kildare

Name	Florentino V. Floro, Jr.
Caption	Florentino V. Floro, Jr.
Birth date	November 05, 1953
Birth place	Manila
Known for	Self-proclaimed psychic, former judge dismissed for mental illness
Nationality	Filipino

Florentino V. Floro, Jr. (born November 5, 1953 in Manila) is a former Filipino judge who achieved notoriety after being suspended from the Philippine judiciary in 2006 due to mental illness. Floro made several statements that he was psychic and claimed to frequently communicate with invisible duendes, a type of dwarf common in Latin American mythology.

Biography

Florentino V. Floro, Jr. was born in Manila, Philippines on November 5, 1953, eldest of five brothers, to Florentino Carreon Floro and Milagros Geronimo Velasquez. Floro's primary education was by the Religious of the Virgin Mary, graduating from secondary school in 1969 in Valenzuela City. Initially training to be a priest, he entered the seminary in 1965, leaving the priesthood to enter law. From 1970 to 1974 Floro attended Adamson University and Ateneo de Manila University's Loyola Schools, earning a BA in philosophy and theology. Floro earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from the Ateneo Law School and placed 12th in the 1983 Philippine Bar Examinations with a grade of 87.55 percent.

Judicial career

In 1995 Floro applied to the Judicial and Bar Council, but was rejected for the bench after failing the mandatory psychological examination by the Supreme Court of the Philippines. The Clinic Services of the Supreme Court found "evidence of ego disintegration" and "developing psychotic process", and Floro voluntarily withdrew his application. On his 45th birthday Floro was appointed a regional trial court judge in the Metro Manila region of the capital

Claims

While a judge, Floro made a number of claims, including: On Fridays, Floro would change from his traditional blue robes to black, which he claimed helped him recharge his psychic powers. Floro's claims went on to garner worldwide attention.

Judgment

After 68 months of suspension, on April 7, 2006 the Supreme Court fined Floro 40,000 pesos and removed him from his position with three years back pay, allowances and benefits. The court did not find Floro guilty of gross misconduct or corruption but did find that his mental health indicated "gross deficiency in competence and independence". Floro was also not barred from application or admittance to government services which do not require the dispensation of justice. and argued that he should not be dismissed for his beliefs. The court stressed that its decision had nothing to do with Floro's beliefs in dwendes or the validity of that belief, but permitting him to continue as a judge would be harmful to public trust in the judiciary as a guardian of the law. Floro claimed he was dismissed due to his belief in the paranormal.

On February 3, 2010, Floro filed his own nomination for the post of Supreme Court chief justice, which is scheduled to be vacated by incumbent Reynato Puno upon his retirement on May 17. However, the high tribunal excluded him from the list of nominees on February 8, citing his earlier disbarment order.

Lawsuits

Since his suspension from the judiciary, Floro has filed multiple lawsuits.

In June, 2004, Floro filed an intervention petition, in the certiorari lawsuit filed by the opposition Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (KNP) Davao City Rep. Ruy Elias Lopez, to stop a joint session of Congress from canvassing the votes for president and vice president. Floro asked the Court to declare a failure of elections and order the COMELEC to conduct special presidential elections. Floro also asked the Supreme Court to declare Noli de Castro as acting President, as Solomonic solution to the political crisis.

In January, 2007, the Supreme Court of the Philippines dismissed with finality the August 30, 2006 Disbarment administrative lawsuit filed by Floro against Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Jr., Justice Bernardo P. Pardo, Alfredo Benipayo and 6 others.

In late April, 2007, Floro filed a disbarment complaint grounded on charges of gross misconduct, ignorance of the law, manifest undue interest, questionable temporary restraining orders and violations of the ethical standards and code of conduct by the Philippine Court of Appeals Associate Justices, "CA ‘Dirty Dozen". Floro named one justice specifically as part of a "dirty dozen", twelve judges currently under investigation for corruption by the court's Ombudsman.

For non-payment of docket fees, the High Court, on June 5, 2007, dismissed Floro's intervention petition dated May 30, 2007, and his supplement dated June 1, 2007, in the Gregory S. Ong citizenship case, filed by former Senate President Jovito Salonga.

On, August 1, 2008, Floro filed a taxpayer lawsuit against some Court of Appeals Justices and lawyers in the GSIS-Meralco bribery case.

References

External links

psychic-and-healing-judge.blogspot.com — Floro's blog

Category:1953 births Category:Ateneo de Manila University alumni Category:Living people Category:People from Bulacan Category:Filipino judges Category:Filipino lawyers Category:Filipino people of Chinese descent Category:Filipino Roman Catholics Category:People claiming to have paranormal abilities Category:Adamson University alumni Category:Internet personalities Category:Filipino bloggers

Anne McDonald (11 January 1961—22 October 2010) was an Australian author and an activist for the rights of people with communication disability.

McDonald was born on 11 January 1961 in Seymour, Victoria, a small Australian town. As a result of a birth injury she developed severe athetoid cerebral palsy. She was diagnosed as having severe intellectual disability and at the age of three was placed by her parents in St. Nicholas Hospital, Melbourne, a Health Commission (government) institution for people classified with severe disability, and lived there without education or therapy for eleven years. During her time in the hosiptal she was neglected and starved and at age 16 she weighed only 12 kilograms. Despite her ill-treatment, McDonald considered herself "a lucky one", who escaped through a stroke of good fortune. By her own reckoning, 163 of her friends died in the institution while she was there.

In 1977, when McDonald was 16, Rosemary Crossley was able to establish communication with her through a method known as facilitated communication training. Once McDonald was able to make her wishes known she sought her discharge from St. Nicholas. Her parents and the hospital authorities denied her request on the grounds that the reality of her communication had not been established. In 1979, when McDonald turned eighteen, she commenced a habeas corpus action in the Supreme Court of Victoria against the Health Commission in order to win the right to leave the institution. The court accepted that Anne McDonald’s communication was her own and allowed her to leave the hospital and live with Rosemary Crossley. More Supreme Court proceedings and further tests were required to win the right to manage her own financial affairs.

McDonald wrote her story in Annie’s Coming Out, a book she co-authored with Rosemary Crossley in 1980 (the film Annie's Coming Out based on the book won several Australian Film Institute awards and was released in the U.S. under the title 'Test of Love'). The book has been translated into German and recorded on tape. It won the inaugural Allen Lane Award for the best book of the year dealing with disability.

After leaving the institution McDonald got her Higher School Certificate (University entrance) qualification at night school and went on to take a humanities degree at Deakin University, completed in 1993. She has written a number of articles and papers on disability, has spoken at a number of conferences, and has been active in the disability rights movement, with special emphasis on the right to communicate.

On the night of the 3rd December 2008 McDonald received the Personal Achievement Award in the Australian 2008 National Disability Awards at the Australian Federal Parliament House as part of that years International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

McDonald died of a heart attack on 22 October 2010.

Bibliography

Annie's Coming Out (Penguin Books, 1980) ISBN 0140056882

References

External links

Anne McDonald: Home Page

The Right to Communicate

My Years In Hell

My Frankenstein

What I Think Of Euthanasia

I've only got one life to live, and I don't want to waste it all proving I exist

"To thyself be enough."

IMDB link to the film Annie's Coming Out

Category:1961 births Category:Australian memoirists Category:Australian non-fiction writers Category:Disability rights activists Category:Australian people with disabilities Category:2010 deaths Category:People with cerebral palsy