 He was called the "most militant and aggressive" of the Filipino advocates of complete and immediate independence in the first decades of the 20th century.His contemporaries called him the "Great Dissenter", an archetypal political oppositionist who fought for his convictions with little regard of the cost.A fighter of lost causes and "defender of the poor and oppressed", he was one of the most active and best-known criminal lawyers of his time.The acknowledged "Father" of Cebuano journalism, literature and language, Sotto was one of the leading Filipino intellectuals of the early twentieth century.