The MLitt program was a percolator for me. In the cold yet comforting atmosphere of the Scottish coast on the North Sea, the ideas and thoughts of lawyers, future law students, budding historians, and potential practitioners of international relations come together in a rich and supercharging mix with every MLitt cohort intake. For one year, amidst the bars and c
offee shops along North, South, and Market Streets, and in the libraries and classrooms bustling with academic activity, this small yet special group prepares for the next stage of their individual careers and life pursuits. They brew their future, as it were, with blends of legal history, international law, and even legal philosophy: Maitland and Milsom, Hart and Henry II, Marx and Montesquieu, Kelsen and Critical Legal Studies. For those like me who chose the Legal History track, we were privileged to study the summation of modern and global legal traditions and their progress from simpler yet still relevant times, with the hope that this culmination of knowledge and wisdom could still inform the chaotic yet familiar present.
After percolating, the coffee must be served up and consumed. Then, the real work begins. A few months after our graduation, in absentia during COVID, I returned to the Philippines and began a whirlwind of a post-MLitt career: returning to work at the DOJ and handling human rights-related work during the last full year of the Duterte administration; resigning to join a failed presidential campaign; resuming employment as a court attorney (judicial assistant) for a Supreme Court justice (my job to this day); taking and passing the required course for trial court judge applicants; publishing three law journal articles, one of which was recently in a decision penned by the Chief Justice; and taking up my current studies to be a Doctor of Civil Law. Indeed, the effects of the MLitt coffee are still in my system, sustaining and surcharging my endeavours. And I’m definitely sure it wasn’t Tesco-brand.
Paolo Celeridad
MLitt in Legal and Constitutional Studies, 2019-20