Biography

Professor Pangalangan specializes in Public International and Constitutional Law. He taught Public International Law at the Harvard Law School as Visiting Professor in 2007, where he won Laylin Prize in 1986 for best paper in public international law for his LL.M. thesis and the Sumner Prize for best thesis on issues relating to international peace for his S.J.D. dissertation in 1990. At The Hague Academy of International Law, he lectured on Disputed Islands in the South China Sea and Southeast Asia during its 2008 session and served as Director of Studies in 2000.

He has had extensive exposure to rule of law and judicial reform activities in the Philippines. The Supreme Court appointed him amicus counsel during the impeachment of the Chief Justice (Francisco v. House of Representatives) and more recently in a case involving gas extraction from contested portions of the country’s continental shelf. He was also lead counsel before the Supreme Court in David v. Arroyo, challenging successfully the president’s proclamation of a state of emergency in February 2006. He has sat on various SC committees, e.g., to revise the rules on recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, on legal education and on bar examination reform.

He also teaches Constitutional Law at the Philippine Judicial Academy, the official training institute for all judges. He has undertaken rule of law, legal ethics and judicial reform projects with various international programs.

He was a Philippine Delegate to the 1998 Rome Conference that wrote the Statute of the International Criminal Court. He chairs the Bantay Katarungan (Sentinels of Justice), a lawyers’ organization to strengthen the rule of law, and writes an Op-Ed column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, nation’s most popular newspaper.

He has also taught Comparative Asian Constitutionalisms at Melbourne University (Spring 2009 and Fall 2005) and Hong Kong University/Duke University (2008). He has lectured at the Irish Centre for Human Rights (2003); Japan Society of International Law (2002); Thessaloniki Institute of International Public Law (2001); and the International Committee of the Red Cross. He sits in the governing council of the International Association of Constitutional Law and of the Asian Society of International Law.

Professor Pangalangan received his A.B. cum laude (1978) and LL.B. (1983) from the University of the Philippines, and his LL.M. (1986) and S.J.D. (1990) from the Harvard Law School. He received the Diploma of The Hague Academy of International Law in 1987.