Category Archives: Supreme Court

September 12, 2010 · 17:00

More money, more money

The Philippine Supreme Court has seen President Aquino’s first budget, and it is upset. The Judiciary seldom gets much more than .8% of the budget. In 2007, the judiciary received only .76% of the national budget, in 2008, .88%, in 2009, .94%, and in 2010, .87%,” the SC lamented. However, according to PhilStar:

Court administrator and SC spokesman Jose Midas Marquez earlier told the House committee on appropriations that they are asking for P27.1 billion, but Malacañang has cut the proposal to only P14.3 billion.

In other words, the current allocation is a mere .78% of the budget. It’s a significant cut for a judicial system that already suffers severe resource constraints. The Supreme Court issued a very strong statement condemning the budget. Here’s a particularly excitable excerpt:

Many of our judges and justices will continue to use their own personal computers and printers, repair their own courtrooms, work on weekends to declog their dockets… But until when can they last? Are we waiting for our justices and judges to march the streets, for the judiciary to revolt, for justice to ground to a halt? Are we courting chaos?

One interesting longer term question is whether this resource crisis will undermine the Philippine Judiciary’s independence. If judges have to beg the administration for more funding, will they be more susceptible to influence. One might think so. However, I personally hope the Philippine Supreme Court has enough of a sense of history to prevent that from happening. Based on Shadow of Doubt, I’m not so sure, but I suspect the Court might become more moderate over the next few years OR become increasingly involved in issues that concern the elites (and thereby building a stronger base of political support). As always with the Philippines, these are interesting times…

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August 16, 2010 · 12:58

New Philippine Supreme Court Justice – the leftover one

Unlike the appointment of a Supreme Court chief justice back in the spring, President Aquino appointed Lourdes Aranal-Sereno as the new associate justice without much political hassle or controversy. Her credentials are pretty strong – Sereno received A.B. Economics at the Ateneo de Manila University and received her law degree from UP. Before joining the court, she was Executive Director of the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center and also a faculty member at PHILJA, as well as other institutions. For more details, here is a brief backgrounder on her.  

However, Sereno wasn’t the Judicial and Bar Council’s first choice. The JBC must nominate three candidates for any Supreme Court vacancy, and the president must chose one of those three. However, in this case, Aquino asked the JBC for other names lower down on its list. Sereno was ranked 6th. There’s some speculation that Aquino chose her because she was a friend and classmate at Ateneo, but he denies ever having met her before the appointment. 
I doubt this will amount to much politically for Aquino, but it’s still a slight oddity in otherwise a relatively successful de-thawing of executive-judicial relations.

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August 11, 2010 · 18:54

So much for hegemonic preservation

Earlier this year, when President Arroyo insisted on appointing the new Supreme Court Chief Justice, critics accused her of seeking to stack the judiciary to ensure it would uphold her policies and shield her from accountability. So far, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. The Supreme Court seems intent on accommodating the new Aquino administration and hasn’t stuck its neck out for Arroyo. According to reports from Manila, it seems like the Supreme Court will not rule Aquino’s Executive Order No. 2 unconstitutional. E.O. No. 2 would sack all of Arroyo’s midnight appointees. We’ll see what happens, but for now the much-anticipated showdown between Aquino and the justices looks a ways off.

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July 28, 2010 · 18:09

Copycat Court

When comparative constitutional law scholars talk about “borrowing” foreign jurisprudence, I don’t think they meant plagiarizing foreign sources.

The case in question, Isabelita Vinuya of Malaya Lolas Organization vs. Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, rejected the claims of 70 Filipino “comfort women”for reparations for sexual abuse suffered during World War II. The decision, written by Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo, found that prohibitions against sexual slavery and torture did not constitute jus cogens norms.

However, according to Philippine law professor Harry Roque, Justice del Castillo lifted parts of several American law review articles, particularly A Fiduciary Theory of Jus Cogens by Ivan Criddle and Evan Fox-Descent. Roque and others have filed a motion for a reconsideration of the case. For his part, according to his comments on the Opinio Juris blog (see the first comment), Prof. Criddle seemed most troubled that his article was cited in order imply that sexual slavery and torture do not fall under jus cogens.

The Supreme Court is forwarding the allegations to the new 6-justice ethics committee, created late in Chief Justice Puno’s term. This will be the first case before the committee regarding another justice’s conduct. As such, it could be an interesting test case to see whether the new committee has teeth and will clear up some of the problems discussed in Shadow of Doubt.

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June 24, 2010 · 17:12

Improving relations between the Philippine Judiciary and Executive

According to a Filipino newspaper, the Aquino administration plans to convene the Judicial Executive Legislative Advisory and Coordination Council (Jelacc) fairly early in the new administration. This seems to be an attempt to resolve some of the conflict over Aquino’s criticism of the appointment of the new chief justice, Renato Corona. Then again, this might be difficult given that the Supreme Court is expected to hear a lawsuit against the Aquino family plantation, the Hacienda Lusita, fairly soon.

The news article also mentions a recent World Bank study on Philippine judicial reform. I couldn’t find that study, but I did find one produced by the Asian Development Bank (available here).

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