It is thus necessary to resolve whether the Sandiganbayan
committed grave abuse of discretion when it rejected petitioners'
thesis that to reveal the identity of their client would violate the
attorney-client privilege. The attorney-client privilege is the oldest of
the privileges for confidential communications known to the
common law.1 For the first time in this jurisdiction, we are asked to
rule whether the attorney-client privilege includes the right not to
disclose the identity of client. The issue poses a trilemma for its
resolution requires the delicate balancing of three opposing policy
considerations. One overriding policy consideration is the need for
courts to discover the truth for truth alone is the true touchstone of
justice.2 Equally compelling is the need to protect the adversary
system of justice where truth is best extracted by giving a client
broad privilege to confide facts to his counsel.3 Similarly deserving
of sedulous concern is the need to keep inviolate the constitutional
right against self-incrimination and the right to effective counsel in
criminal litigations. To bridle at center the centrifugal forces of these
policy considerations, courts have followed to prudential principle
that the attorney-client privilege must not be expansively construed
as it is in derogation of the search for truth.4 Accordingly, a narrow
construction has been given to the privilege and it has been
consistently held that "these competing societal interests demand
that application of the privilege not exceed that which is necessary
to effect the policy considerations underlying the privilege, i.e., the
privilege must be upheld only in those circumstances for which it
was created.'"5
Prescinding from these premises, our initial task is to define in clear
strokes the substantive content of the attorney-client privilege
within the context of the distinct issues posed by the petition at bar.
With due respect, I like to start by stressing the irreducible principle
that the attorney-client privilege can never be used as a shield to
commit a crime or a fraud. Communications to an attorney having
for their object the commission of a crime ". . . partake the nature of
a conspiracy, and it is not only lawful to divulge such
communications, but under certain circumstances it might become
the duty of the attorney to do so. The interests of public justice
require that no such shield from merited exposure shall be
interposed to protect a person who takes counsel how he can safely
commit a crime. The relation of attorney and client cannot exist for
the purpose of counsel in concocting crimes."6 In the well chosen
words of retired Justice Quiason, a lawyer is not a gun for hire.7 I
hasten to add, however, that a mere allegation that a lawyer
conspired with his client to commit a crime or a fraud will not defeat
the privilege.8 As early as 1933, no less than the Mr. Justice Cardozo
held in Clark v. United States9 that: "there are early cases apparently
