Erlinda Ignacio Espiritu: 1st woman to receive law degree from Harvard
Erlinda Ignacio Espiritu from Mindoro was the first woman who obtained a degree from the Harvard Law School. —Photo from Harvard Law School/Instagram
MANILA, Philippines — Drawing inspiration from the legends of the Knights of the Round Table to become a lawyer, Erlinda Ignacio Espiritu from Mindoro was the first woman to receive a degree from the Harvard Law School (HLS).
In line with the celebration of International Women’s Month, the tribute was posted by Harvard Law School in its , citing an article of Harvard Law Bulletin in 2007.
“The knights were always defending the defenseless, and I thought, how could I do that?” Espiritu said in the article.
READ:
Espiritu also acknowledged the limited opportunities women had to deal with, many decades ago. She said that not many women took up law, but she persevered and became one of the few female lawyers of the country in 1947 amid the Japanese occupation.
READ: SC lauds women’s ‘growing presence’ in judiciary
She studied at Manuel L. Quezon School of Law in Manila before obtaining her Masters of Law degree at HLS in 1951.
“Women were supposed to stay at home, and even if they were studying, they were studying to teach,” she added.
Espiritu bared that her father wanted her to study abroad, but she requested it should be at HLS, despite knowing that it would only accept male students. The Harvard Corporation would later on reverse its policy on denying law school applications from women.
She said that she was “at a loss” at Harvard, but she attributed her HLS experience to good professors and “teaching her how to think.”
She worked as a corporate legal counsel for one of the biggest land developers in the country shortly after her husband died.
Handling her first criminal case in 1959, she represented a prisoner sentenced to death for murder of a fellow inmate.
Despite an initial court ruling of upholding the death sentence for her client, she challenged the order before the board of pardons and her client’s sentence was reduced just before his scheduled execution.
She was a president of a family-owned rural bank for 32 years and did pro-bono legal work until May 2006.
In October 2007, Espiritu returned to HLS as a guest of honor at a dinner, in which she thanked Harvard for “the opportunity to learn well, not only in the matters of law but in improving the lives of our fellow men.”
