Claro M. Recto

Claro Mayo Recto Jr. (February 8, 1890 – October 2, 1960) was a Filipino lawyer, jurist, writer, author, columnist, diplomat, and statesman who served as a senator of the Philippines from 1931 until his death in 1960. Recto was the primary author of the 1935 Philippine Constitution, one of the foremost figures in the Philippine Independence from the United States, and is remembered as the "Great Dissenter" and the "Great Academician", as a fierce opponent of U.S. neocolonialism in Asia in his later years, and a staunch Filipino nationalist throughout his career.

Recto began his political career as the representative for the 3rd District of Batangas in 1919 and held the position until 1928, emerging as a prominent member of the Democrata Party. He was elected as a senator to the 10th Philippine Legislature, where he opposed the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, and later became president of the 1934 Philippine Constitutional Convention that drafted the 1935 Constitution. Recto and future president Manuel L. Quezon personally presented the constitution to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also appointed Recto as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines—the last to be appointed by the United States.

At the height of World War II, Recto was detained by the United States for suspected collaboration with the Japanese, but was nonetheless reelected in 1941, garnering the highest number of votes among the elected senators. He joined the KALIBAPI during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and served in President Jose P. Laurel's wartime cabinet. Recto was faced with treason and collaboration charges at the end of the war, but refused the amnesty issued by President Manuel Roxas and chose to defend himself in court instead. He was acquitted of all charges.

He was reelected to the Senate in 1949 and 1955, where he was an outspoken critic of continued American influence in Asia—as well as Presidents Elpidio Quirino and Ramon Magsaysay—for which he was targeted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Following Carlos P. Garcia's assumption to the presidency in 1957, Recto and Senator Lorenzo Tañada defected from Nacionalista and established the Nationalist Citizens' Party (NCP). The pair ran under the NCP in the hotly-contested 1957 presidential election, but ultimately lost, ending up fourth in the national vote.

In 1960, Recto was appointed the Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Philippines' cultural envoy. He died under mysterious circumstances (reported as a heart attack) on October 2, 1960, in Rome, on a diplomatic mission en route to Spain. Historians believe that the CIA may have had a hand in his death.

He is the father of former Batasang Pambansa assemblyman Rafael Recto and grandfather of Secretary of Finance Ralph Recto.