Leonor Ines Luciano, woman empowered

Leonor Ines Luciano turns 80 on May 8, just two months away. Her biography, launched two weeks ago in time for the celebration of International Women’s Month, talks about her huge world of good deeds. Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno describes her in the book’s foreword as having “lived a life of service and without hesitance, weariness, or remorse. In all her endeavors . . . (she) perfectly exemplifies a woman who has not wasted a single moment as she attempts to play forward and improve the world. She is a paragon of firmness of character and true benevolence.”

 Biographer Perla Aragon Choudhury writes of her subject’s life as having been “one steadfast empowerment process dedicated to the service of those most in need, and performed with grace best described as God-given.”

 Perla tells us that years before Justice Luciano received an award as Woman Farmer of the Year, through the Rural Improvement Club and 4H Club, she was teaching other women and rural youth to be self-reliant, helping them organize cooperatives and start businesses producing and selling homemade food from backyard gardens. After she won the prize, she taught farmers to plant new varieties of rice, thus “empowering a sector of the population that for generations had been very tradition-bound.”

 As a young lawyer, she, with other volunteers, ran the WILOCI Legal Aid Center, helping indigent wives and mothers find solutions to their family problems and appearing in court pro bono on their behalf.

 When she was in the judiciary – as the first judge of the Juvenile Domestic Relations Court of Quezon City, and Associate Justice of the Court of Appeals — she focused not only on making decisions, but also on rehabilitating the offenders and creating foundations for them and their families.

As a two-time president of the Catholic Women’s League, as president of the National Council of Women in the Philippines, as a two-term Sectoral Representative for Women in Congress and as a founder and guiding light for a number of women’s non-governmental organizations, Justice Luciano gave her time and resources to empower women.

Leonor is the third of seven children of Leon Ines of Sinait, Ilocos Sur, the country’s first hydraulics engineer who built major bridges and water dams, and Maria Resurreccion y Posadas, an entrepreneur who taught her children how to cook and sew and vend her bakery products to bishops and American high school teachers. The couple taught them lessons in humility and being of service to others.

Leonor finished law in 1941 at the University of the Philippines. Not only was she bright; she was considered one of the beauties on the UP campus. (At age 80, she is still a beauty.) She began her law practice in the law firm of Ferdinand Marcos, her assignments mostly divorce cases.  When she transferred to a trading firm as a house counsel, she met the personable son of a sugar planter, Aristedes Luciano, whom she married when she was 25 and he, 32, with whom she has five children, all of whom have excelled in their professions.

   In 1954, when there was a critical rice shortage, she accepted a challenge by President Ramon Magsaysay for farmers to increase their rice yields, which at that time, were from 15 to 30 cavans per hectare. She personally planted seedlings, and, applying scientific techniques, her yield was an amazing 111 cavans per hectare. She received a Legion of Honor Medal from the president, and a Fordson Major Diesel tractor from her husband.

 She did not practice law when her five children were growing up, and when she was ready, she agreed to accept the position of first Judge of the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of Quezon City. In her tenth year, she disposed of 6,847 cases out of a total of 7,876 cases filed involving juveniles and families. She made innovations as JDRC-QC judge. To prevent the detention of minors in congested quarters, she decided that all those charged with minor offenses should be brought back home safely to their parents as soon as possible. She also started holding night hearings at the police precinct at the Araneta Center in Cubao.

To expedite hearings, Judge Luciano required social workers, guidance counselors and parents of minor offenders to be present in the court. The results: minors were being sent home after the trial, the caseload carryover was lowered, and the number of detentions and separations from the families was greatly reduced.

Other innovations she introduced were the establishment of the Molave Youth Home to prevent the contact of minors with hardened criminals in jail and to provide minors with training on how to be moral, productive, and upright citizens and the setting up of the Quezon City Youth Development Foundation to support the Molave Youth Home.

Still another innovation was setting up the Quezon City Tanglaw Pansambayan (Light for the Community) Foundation together with the Christian Children’s Fund to take care of the families of juvenile offenders.     

Judge Luciano’s sterling performance drew praises from foreign visitors who said the JDRC could well serve as a model. Unfortunately a judicial reorganization created Regional Trial Courts which absorbed the functions of special courts. But Judge Luciano’s star continued to shine; she was appointed an RTC judge herself, serving as Presiding Judge for one year, and later, as Associate Justice of the Court of Appeals.

In her five years at the appellate court, Justice Luciano handed down more than 800 decisions. Over 90 percent of her decisions on appeal to the Supreme Court were affirmed.

She has received numerous awards for her accomplishments, the latest being the Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award during the UP Centennial celebration in June. During the UP Alumni Council Meeting, she was lauded as someone who “studied the law, practiced the law, wrote the law, and interpreted the law.”

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