DEAN FROILAN M. BACUNGAN

Dean Froilan Bacungan served as the 7^th Dean of the University of the Philippines (U.P.) College of Law (1978 – 1983).

It was during his Deanship that new academic institutions in the field of  law were established at the College, namely, a Legal Resources Center, an Academy for ASEAN Law and Jurisprudence, an International Studies Institute of the Philippines and an Institute of Judicial Administration. A new law curriculum was also adopted to make legal education more responsive to the vital roles that the legal profession plays in the Philippine society.

Dean Bacungan was also Director of the U.P. Law Center (1973 – 1979). As Director, he added a new dimension – that of law and development – to the traditional programs of the Center in research and law reform, continuing legal education and legal publication which were all focused on doctrinal law.

Dean Bacungan is a product of the U.P. (Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, 1953; Bachelor of Laws, 1952) and of Yale University (Master of Laws, 1957). At the latter, he was a Fulbright-Smith Mundt Scholar.

Before joining U.P. as a full-time faculty member, he held positions in government and in the private sector including Chief, Research and Public Information Staff and later, Manager, Claims Department, Social Security System (1958 – 1964); Executive Secretary, and as such, legal and economic counselor, Philippine Chamber of Industries (1964 – 1972); and Wage Commissioner (1972 – 1973).

As Professor of Law, he has been teaching Labor Law and Constitutional Law for four decades. The author of a number of books, monographs and articles on these subjects, he has been involved in projects dealing with human rights, labor relations, transnational corporations, and the administration of justice.

Widely traveled, he has served as ILO Labor Relations and labor law expert to the Governments of Thailand and Pakistan.

Involved in the study and teaching of human rights, he has been handling the course on Human Rights at the U.P. College of Law. He attended the 1978 Vienna Conference on Human Rights Education and Teaching. He was a member of the UNESCO Committee of Experts on Human Rights that considered its six year Plan for the Development of the Teaching of Human Rights.

As Dean of the premier law school in the Philippines, he chaired a 10-man Committee on Legal Education that submitted a report on Legal Education in the 1990’s to the Supreme Court of the Philippines.

He was Commissioner, Commission on Elections (1984 –1986), and President, Philippine Constitution Association (1986 – 1987) where he has been over the years the Chairman of its Committee on Constitutional Amendments.

He was a Member of Preparatory Commission on Constitutional Reform (PCCR).

He is now providing consulting services in the area of Constitutional Law and Labor Law. He is the pro-bono lawyer of some 800 public school teachers who were dismissed by former Secretary Isidro D. Cariño inspite of the fact that their only “offense” was to peaceably assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances.

He is Chairman of an NGO, Participatory Research, Organization of Communities and Education towards Struggle for Self-Reliance (PROCESS) which has advocacy projects related to Democracy and Human Rights.