Our LECTURERS

Atty. Neri Javier Colmenares has been lecturing in MCLE seminars since 2008. He also lectured at the University of Melbourne on International Humanitarian Law, when he was taking up his PhD on the International Criminal Court (deferred) in 2002.
He was a three-term legislator in the House of Representatives and was the Senior Deputy Minority Leader of the 16th Congress. He has authored several laws such as the law requiring telecommunication companies to send early warning text during typhoons and calamities, the early voting law, special precincts for the elderly and PWDs, as well as the Anti-Torture law, the Anti- Enforced Disappearance law and the Php 10 Billion martial law victims compensation law.

Currently, he is the Chairman of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL), the Vice-President of the Confederation of Lawyers in Asia-Pacific (COLAP) and a member of the Governing Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). He was awarded by the International Bar Association (IBA) the 2020 IBA Award for Outstanding Contribution to Human Rights, and was recently appointed by the IBA HRI to its 12-member Council headed by Supreme Court Justice Richard Goldstone.
He took up Economics at San Beda University and completed his law degree at the University of the Philippines). He has been a legal practitioner since 1997 and has argued before the Supreme Court several times on various controversial constitutional issues. He also argued before the US District Court in Hawaii against the US$ 150 Million settlement agreement of the nearly US$ 2 Billion award won by human rights victims.