The Firm

We provide superior legal services to individuals, companies, and governments around the world. To meet the standards of an increasingly comparative and international legal practice, our lawyers are trained in both common law and civil law traditions and follow only the most exacting standards of the global legal industry.

Founding Partner A. Edsel Tupaz [Practitioner of Foreign, Comparative, and International Law] Mr. Tupaz is the founder and managing partner of the firm. His expertise lies in the fields of international trade and development law, comparative constitutional law, and court systems design.

Mr. Tupaz taught a seminar on international development law and policy at the New England School of Law, Boston. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and was admitted to Stanford's advanced program in international legal studies (SPILS-JSM) in 2009.

While teaching law at the heart of Boston, he concurrently held the position of Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School under the supervision of Professors Mark Tushnet, Frank Michelman, and David Kennedy. He was previously offered various teaching fellowships at Harvard University to teach Social Analysis 72, Economics: A Critical Approach (Marglin), Introduction to Comparative Politics (Levitsky), and Crime, Justice, and the American Legal System (Braga).

Raised in California, Mr. Tupaz received his primary and secondary education in the public schools of Sacramento, the state's capital. He majored in economics at the Ateneo de Manila University. He was awarded Best Thesis (along with Mr. Gabriel Domingo) on the topic of capital flight. He delivered the results of this work at the Financial Volatility Module of the 1999 Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) conference, which was held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Mr. Tupaz earned his Juris Doctor from the Ateneo de Manila School of Law in 2003 and graduated with the highest honors: the St. Thomas More Most Distinguished Award. During his JD studies, Mr. Tupaz was an editor of the Ateneo Law Journal, president and head coach of the debate society, and co-chairperson of the commercial law review bar operations. Following law school, he worked as a corporate attorney at SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan Law Offices. In 2005 and 2006, he served as a law clerk and principal speechwriter for the Chief Justice of the Philippines and also became a speechwriter for the Philippine Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. He occasionally taught undergraduate courses in economics, taxation, agrarian reform, political philosophy and philosophy of law.

In 2008, Mr. Tupaz assumed the position of Managing Technical Editor (along with Emily Caveness) of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Around the same time, he became one of the few pre-law tutors at the Mather House, one of the undergraduate residence halls of Harvard University. While at Mather, Mr. Tupaz advised college students at Harvard as they prepared to enter legal studies.

To contact Mr. Tupaz directly, please email info@TupazLaw.com

Bars

• Philippines

Education

• Harvard Law School, 2008
• Ateneo de Manila School of Law, 2003
• Ateneo de Manila College of Arts and Sciences, 1999

Languages

• English
• Filipino
• Spanish
• Latin

Citizenship

• Philippines

Practice Areas

• Comparative constitutional law and policy
• International trade and development law
• International business transactions
• General corporate services

Fields of Research

• Comparative constitutional law and politics
• Legislation and law reform
• Court systems design
• Post-conflict and deeply divided societies
• Transitional justice and human rights
• Hybrid courts and war crimes tribunals
• Law and development
• Law and economics
• Cognitive theory
• Law and literature
• Legal theory
• Rhetoric
  

Books

• THE LAW ON PEOPLE POWER: A JURISTIC THEORY OF SOVEREIGNTY (2004)
• FUNDAMENTALS ON IMPEACHMENT (2001)

Articles and Essays

• The Mindanao Question: Constitutional Dialogue in Southern Philippines, 54 ATENEO L. J. 1 (2009)
• A Dialogical-Republican Revival: Respect-worthy Constitutionalism in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Southern Philippines, 54 WAYNE L. REV. 1295 (2008)
• Deliberative Democracy and Weak Courts: Constitutional Design in Nascent Democracies, 12 TOURO INT'L L. REV. 1 (2008)
• Constitutional Courts in Divided Societies: A Call for Scholarship on International Interventionism in Constitutional Law and Politics, 53 ATENEO L. J. 324 (2008).
• Deliberative Democracy and Weak Courts, 53 ATENEO L. J. 343 (2008)
• International Interventionism in Constitutional Courts, 13 CRT. SYSTEMS J. 23 (Manila: Supreme Court of the Republic of the Philippines 2008)
• Self-Determination as "Defined" Under the Draft Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Secession or Autonomy? 51 ATENEO L. J. 1039 (2007)
• Ruiz v. Court of Appeals: A Moral Hazard, 49 ATENEO L. J. 982 (2004)
• A Treatise on Arbitration, 27 UNIV. OF THE EAST L. J. 8 (2004)
• A Treatise on Mediation, 1 SAN SEBASTIAN L. J. 76 (2004)
• Conservatorship, Receivership, and Liquidation Proceedings Under the New Central Bank Act, LAWYERS REV., May 31, 2004, at 3, 4-9
• The Constitution of the Revolutionary Assembly: A Theory of Convergence of Assessments, 2-3 BUDHI 123 (2003)
• A Synthesis of the Colloquium on Indigenous Peoples, 47 ATENEO L. J. 775 (Manila: 2002)
• The People Power and the Supreme Court in Estrada v. Arroyo, 47 ATENEO L. J. 8 (Manila: 2002)

Articles in Broadsheets

• Abu Sayyaf: Terrorism or Banditry? (Opinion Section), PHILIPPINE STAR (Manila), June 9, 2001, at 12
• People Power and the Constitution (Cover Story), PHILIPPINE GRAPHIC (Manila), November 20, 2000, at 19-20
• A Time for Martial Law? MANILA TIMES (Manila), May 3, 2000, at 7A (also published in SUN STAR (Manila), May 6, 2000, at 4-5; NORTHERN MINDANAO CHRONICLE (Butuan City), June 7, 2000, at 1 (frontpage); THE PEOPLE'S GUARDIAN (Butuan City), June 2, 2000, at 2)
• The Sticky Problem of Amending the Constitution, SUN STAR (Manila), Nov. 25, 1999, at 5
• Awarded Best of Children's Essays: He Had the Best Toys in the World, SACRAMENTO UNION (Sacramento, California), Dec. 21, 1986
  ...>> author was 9 years old
  ...>> narrating the author's experience in early youth seeking political asylum with his family after the 1986 "People Power" revolution that toppled the late dictator Marcos

Interests

• 19th and 20th century literature on Christian transcendentalism, Ultimate Frisbee, and Belgian beer