Message of Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio During the Launch of "Credit Transactions: Notes and Cases"

"I am very pleased to be here for the launching of Prof. Gomez-Somera’s 2-volume textbook, Credit Transactions: Notes and Cases. Stephanie Gomez was my student in Credit Transactions, and after her graduation she joined me in private practice. She also joined me in the Office of the President when I served as Chief Presidential Legal Counsel under President Fidel V. Ramos.

While in private practice, Atty. Gomez and I agreed on one thing: Credit Transactions is one of the most useful subjects. Whether you do litigation or corporate work, you encounter aspects of Credit Transactions in most of the cases you handle. It simply pays to be well grounded in the subject.

Sometime in the late 1980s, I suggested to Atty. Gomez that we write a book on Credit Transactions. She dutifully prepared an outline but in private practice you seldom have enough time for extra work like writing a textbook. So nothing happened to that book project of ours, solely due to my fault.

Presentation of "Credit Transactions: Notes and Cases"

Allow me to present this textbook, Credit Transactions: Notes and Cases, Volumes I and II, by briefly discussing what I consider its deviations from the usual.

The first deviation is that the provisions of the law are not presented sequentially; rather, they are discussed based on the defining elements of the credit transaction under study.  The reason is that to the student, specifically, the sophomore student of the College, certain phrases, for example, “obligations of the bailor” will have no immediate denotative, much less connotative meaning.  On the other hand, certain other phrases, such as “the obligation to deliver,” should immediately bring to their mind concepts already studied in previous subjects, in this case, the concept of “real contracts” and all its legal denotations and connotations.

The second deviation is that in the cases, which are excerpts rather than digests of Supreme Court decisions, the provisions of the contracts under review are line bordered.  The intention is to focus the student’s attention on contract language.  One of the assignments I give in my course is a contract review of an actual contract of loan with real estate mortgage and a contract of loan with chattel mortgage.  They are required to submit a memorandum advising a fictional client, either the creditor or the debtor, on contractual rights and obligations. The goal is to familiarize the student not only with the language of decisions and pleadings, with which he or she is inundated, but also with the language of contracts.

The third deviation is that the law is reformatted without any change in its language.  Borrowing from diagramming as a means of teaching grammar, and from the way students highlight, sectionalize and mark up what they read, the legal provisions are in a sense “diagrammed” so that the student immediately focuses on the essential elements already contained in the very language of the law.  For example Article 1933 is presented with a lead phrase “By the contract of loan,” teaching the student from that first phrase alone that the obligations in a loan always arise as a consequence of contract, with all its legal implications.

Like all deviations, there is therefore an element of experimentation involved in this textbook, and a determination of the success or failure of this experiment will depend on how my students perform this semester.

For me, it is appropriate that the textbook leads off with a case decided by Justice George A. Malcolm.  Allow me then to read an excerpt that discusses the case of People v. Concepcion, G.R. No. L-19190, November 29, 1922, 44 Phil 126:

"Justice Malcolm’s definition of credit in People v. Concepcion provides a conceptual framework for understanding credit in relation to credit transactions.  Borrowing from Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, he defined credit as a person’s “ability to borrow money by virtue of the confidence or trust reposed by a lender that he will pay what he may promise.”... This definition hews closely to the dictionary definition of the word credit, which is, “belief; trust” originating as it does from the Latin credere, to trust, to believe." 

I remind my students that the word “credit” is therefore etymologically linked to the word “creed,” which is why the expression of our Catholic Faith as contained in the Nicene Creed begins with “I believe...”

Which brings me to why I wrote this textbook.  This is a difficult first for me.  It started as an outline, excerpts of relevant cases, and innumerable marginal notes on other textbooks. There was much to do to be able to meet the deadline set in my contract, to make it available for this second semester, and yet there is still even more to do now. Proofreading and lay outing never seems to end, and already I am thinking that it may be more efficient to have a digital version.  I realize that it will be quite a while before I consider this task accomplished.  And therefore I ask myself why I got into this in the first place.

Gratefully, there is an answer.  I wrote this textbook because I believe – I believe - that it will help the students of the College, specifically, my students, see the subject more clearly, and understand it more precisely. So quite simply, I got myself into this because of my students.

In the first part of the textbook there is a list of the people to whom I have expressed gratitude, and it is a privilege to have some of them present here now.  I will not repeat their names, but let me just say that the expression of gratitude on paper does not approximate the depths I feel in my soul.

Thank you all very much.