Appendix 4.20: Resolution of U.P. Law Class 1939 Declaring Its Unqualified Adherence to the New Society and Pledging Its Loyalty and Fealty to President Ferdinand E. Marcos

Abstract

This resolution can be found among the files in the custody of the PCGG. Marcos topped the bar examinations in 1939, as Marcos loyalists love to remind people. Ferdinand Marcos was, of course, his class’s most famous alumnus for reasons besides that. He was not the only member of UP Law Class 1939 to become a guerrilla during the war—writer-lawyer Abelardo Subido, a signatory in the following, was one as well, as was Renato “Katoks” Tayag, who formed a law firm with Marcos before the war. There were other members of Batch 1939 who became fabulously wealthy, such as Marcos crony Roberto Benedicto. But certainly, Marcos was the only member of his batch to become senate president, then president, then dictator. This resolution was signed about two months after the Supreme Court promulgated Javellana v. Executive Secretary, which famously ends with the line “there is no further judicial obstacle to the new [1973] Constitution being considered in force and effect.” Thus, by the time this resolution was signed, Marcos was not only the Batch 1939’s most distinguished alumnus, he had become godlike in the legal field—a Supreme Courtvalidated one-man legislature and chief executive. Or, in the words of the resolution’s signatories, “the Grand Architect of our destiny.”