The SC’s imagined infallibility
This is regarding the letter of Bartolome Fernandez Jr. (“The Supreme Court as ‘court of last error’,” 7/18/17) where he pointed out the number of times the high court has rendered “questionable decisions.” Its flip-flops are egregious proof of its wishy-washiness in not a few times. That certainly debunks the hubris its members must be feeling about their imagined infallibility.
Take motions for reconsideration, for instance. Once the court has promulgated a decision, any attempt to make it change its mind has been described as “suntok sa buwan,” nothing but an exercise in futility. The pleader has to pass through a needle’s eye (or hire the services of very influential lawyers) to get a good argument across and bestir it to take another look at its decision. Nay, lawyers of no consequence say it’s more like talking to a brick wall: “How dare this mere mortal challenge our wisdom!”
If the Supreme Court only keeps an open mind before the finality of its decision in a given case, it may yet see the issues in a different light on motions for reconsideration. That would certainly avoid the spectacle of having do a volte-face in another case with the same issues. Litigants get confused when the court decides one case one way and then another similar case the other way. It makes people wonder which way their cases are going!
Consider the “condonation doctrine” which controlled the mindset of the court for more than half a century, always averse to the very idea of reconsideration. First enunciated in 1959, the ruling inflicted upon the entire nation the idea that politicians who betrayed the public trust were deemed “condoned” through the simple expedient of being “reelected” (i.e., forgiven by the people). My mother, as lawyer for the complainants in a 1993 case, had asked for reconsideration and rejection of that doctrine, to no avail. Having made up its mind, the court blindly invoked the stare decisis rule (Let precedents be not disturbed). Nonlawyer commentators like Inquirer columnist Solita Monsod called that doctrine “crazy.” Others called it “simply idiotic.”
Finally deemed bereft of any moral, constitutional or legal basis, that doctrine was struck down by the 2015 Supreme Court as nothing but a sick judicial aberration. It took the “genius” of Makati’s Binay dynasty to test the limits of that principle for the court to realize what a great disservice it has done to the entire Filipino nation by making that “crazy error” form part of the “law of the land” for a generation or so.
SCARLET S. SYTANGCO, [email protected]
