Renan E. Ramos

Special Counsel

Renan E. Ramos (RER) is a former Assistant Solicitor General and Most Outstanding Lawyer of the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), where he distinguished himself in public advocacy while representing the government in several landmark cases in the Supreme Court. He also authored several law books and occasionally serves as a law lecturer.

RER joined the OSG in 1988, and was promoted to the position of Assistant Solicitor General in 2003, the highest career position for lawyers in the OSG. Before his promotion, his contributions to public advocacy were recognized in 2000 when he was conferred with the “Most Outstanding Lawyer” award.

While working in the OSG, RER litigated landmark Supreme Court cases involving crucial questions of constitutional law, representing the Republic of the Philippines in the petitions assailing the declaration and extension of martial law in Mindanao, the legality of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) “K-to-12” program, and the validity of the actions of the Legal Education Board (LEB). He led the team of lawyers that assailed the auction sale of Metro Rail Transit (MRT-3) properties along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), impugned the validity of the Radio Frequency Identification (RIFD) Memorandum of Agreement entered into by the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC)/Land Transportation Office (LTO), and defended the issuance of the freeze orders against the accounts and assets connected to the main suspects of the Maguindanao Massacre. Arguing before the Supreme Court En Banc, he espoused the position of the OSG as the People’s Tribune in cases involving the procurement of Automated Counting Machines between the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and Mega Pacific, the issuance of a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) issued by a trial court in relation to the procurement of the World Bank-funded textbook program for Filipino elementary and high school students, and the constitutionality of Republic Act No. 9334 which increased the excise tax imposed on alcohol and tobacco products.

He opted for optional retirement in 2020, after 32 years of service in the OSG.

RER also authored law books, such as “Civil Service Law Annotated” (2000), “The Department of Education’s Book of Rules (Service Manual) with Vital Laws in Philippine Education” and “the 1987 Administrative Code Annotated” (2010) published by C & E Publications. He also wrote “Philippine Politics and Governance,” a book for students published by Vibal. His article “Civil Forfeiture Proceedings in the Philippines: the Long Road Ahead” was published in the May 2012 issue of the Philippine Law Journal. In 2014, he read a paper on detention rights in an international confab held at the Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand.

RER taught in the University of Santo Tomas’ Faculty of Civil Law and is a member and trained arbitrator at the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center, Inc. He is also a legal consultant of the University of the Philippines (U.P.) Diliman and is an MCLE lecturer at the U.P. Law Center’s Institute for the Administration of Justice. 

RER graduated from the U.P. Diliman School of Economics in 1981 (where he was a Dean’s lister) and from the U.P. College of Law in 1985. In his first year in law school in 1981, he was chosen as the Editor-in-Chief of the Philippine Law Register, the official student newspaper of the U.P. College of Law.