Supreme Court Justice Highlights Disconnect in Marriage Laws
A Supreme Court justice emphasized the growing disconnect between current marriage laws and the lived realities of many Filipinos. Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen urged lawmakers to show greater empathy and inclusivity when crafting these laws. “Our current law, including its dominant interpretation, does not fully recognize that you can love who you want to love in the way you want to love and for how long you can stay in love,” he explained.
Justice Leonen stressed that the four-word keyphrase “greater empathy and inclusivity” should guide legal reforms to better reflect Filipino experiences. He added, “Those who establish and maintain relationships and love differently from the ideals of a conservative religious morality are not less human. They are no less Filipinos.”
Reconsidering Psychological Incapacity and Illegitimacy
During his lecture on the legal and political foundations of intimacy restrictions, Justice Leonen addressed sensitive concepts such as illegitimacy and psychological incapacity, a ground for nullifying marriages under the Family Code. The law states that a marriage can be declared void if one or both spouses suffer from psychological incapacity at the time of marriage. This incapacity means being unable to fulfill essential marital duties.
Leonen challenged the stigma surrounding this legal ground, saying, “To be different is not to be abnormal. To be different from the hegemonic definition of what humans should be, is not illegitimate. We should not pathologize them with words like ‘psychological incapacity.’ They are not illegitimate. What they do should not be illegal. After all, the capacity to love is a human capacity.”
Event and Advocacy for Inclusive Lawmaking
The lecture took place at Notre Dame of Marbel University in Koronadal, South Cotabato, as part of the series “On the Politics of Regulating Intimacy.” This series is a collaboration between the university and the European Union’s Governance in Justice II Programme. Justice Leonen called for legal reforms grounded in compassion and understanding.
“If we truly are for justice, we will feel how we impose a burden that is a vestige of our colonial past, that even our past colonizer chose no longer to impose on its own people. If we can be truly, justly compassionate, we will know how our law privileges a morality that not all of us share. But that kind of morality, which they do not share, is likewise ethical,” Leonen added.
Support from Justice Sector and Academic Leaders
The lecture was attended by over 200 participants from legal, academic, and judicial sectors. EU GOJUST II Team Leader Christian Eldon praised the Philippine judiciary and academic institutions for supporting legal feminism studies and hailed the Supreme Court’s progressive rulings as tools to raise awareness among the legal community and the public.
Local judicial officials and university leaders, including Executive Judge Dennis A. Velasco and NDMU President Bro. Paterno S. Corpus, also took part in the event. They witnessed the formal handover of the EU GOJUST II Legal Feminism publication to the university, reinforcing the commitment to justice sector reform and inclusivity.
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