Rhetoric and the Supreme Court

“Enough is enough,” Chief Justice Renato Corona erupted. “I mince no words… (against) the insidious attempts to undermine, destroy even, the independence of the judiciary…” How?

“By forcing us to beg for funds, guaranteed to us by the Constitution,” he said. There were also “repeated threats of impeachment, based on a distorted and power-tripping interpretation of breach of public trust… Under my watch, right will always find a sanctuary and wrong will never find a refuge…”

Corona chose his words well. So, why do they evoke, in many, Saul of Tarsus’ image of a “resounding gong or clashing cymbals”?

Former Sen. Rene Saguisag and others see Corona as a “de facto chief justice.” Scandal-tarred President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo skipped more senior justices to hand her former chief of staff a quarter-of-midnight appointment.

Deeds, not delicadeza, are the crucial yardstick here.  “Nakikilala sa gawa ang totohanang dakila,” the Tagalog proverb says. “He who is truly great is known by his deeds.”

So, how has the Arroyo Court performed?

Malacañang rapped Corona for using budget cuts, already restored by Congress, to “sidestep” the Court’s recall of a “final” ruling that reinstated 1,400 members of the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines (Fasap). The Court derailed the implementation of that decision.

Philippine Airlines (PAL) lawyer Estelito Mendoza wrote the Supreme Court that the Second Division erred in deciding for flight attendants and stewards; it was the Special Third Division that was the proper body to handle the case.

“How can a mere letter suffice as a pleading in a Supreme Court case?” Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago snapped. The Court’s own rules thumb down any second motion for reconsideration filed without prior permission.

Justices, nonetheless, scrambled to reconsider a “final decision” on the basis of a letter. “You are not allowed to talk to a Supreme Court justice. …What credibility would be left… (if the Court) declares in one breath that this is final… then entertains an ordinary letter?”

Only if judgment was “legally erroneous,” “patently unjust” and “worked irreparable damage,” is a reversal permitted, Santiago added. “Labintatlong taon iyang (Fasap case) nakabinbin,” she pointed out. (Contrast that with this week’s US Federal Court’s sentencing of former hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam to 11 years in jail, plus a $10-million fine, for insider trading. It took less than two years to bring the case from trial to prison.)

Assume the Fasap decision was issued by the wrong division, that’s a technicality, Santiago said. Will that overturn 13 years of litigation? The Court’s record “is spotty,” Santiago noted. The Court should “take remedial steps” on its rules.

“I am angry because… I fear that the citizenry might turn its back on the bulwark of our civil liberties. If the Court loses its credibility, it will be impossible to regain it in a number of years.”

Unfortunately, the flight attendants and stewards case is not isolated. The Supreme Court cartwheeled four times in just three years, on the matter of 16 towns elbowing to become cities, Sen. Franklin Drilon noted.

Here, too, the zigzags were over a “final decision,” repeatedly exhumed from the judgment entry book. “Does the Supreme Court play judicial yoyo?” asked Viewpoint. (Inquirer, 2/24/11)

All the towns flubbed Republic Act 9009’s criteria for population, land area and P100 million income. So, they opted for palusot in 2007. All 16 laws passed by the 14th Congress were unconstitutional, ruled the Court. “No further pleadings shall be entertained,” the Court decreed in April 2009.

But in December 2009, justices entertained, as in the Fasap case, a prohibited reconsideration. The 16 were cities after all, it ruled—only to order the 16, in August 2010, to haul down city signboards. End of story?

No. In February 2011, the Court flipped again. The towns were cities after all, it ruled—after counsel Estelito Mendoza, the same Estelito Mendoza representing PAL in the Fasap case, wrote a “For-Your-Eyes-Only letter” to justices. Sub-rosa letter writing to Supreme Court justices has not substituted for litigation. Not yet, anyway.

But deep unease persists—for good reason. “When unfounded reversals happen, the Court’s credibility is put at risk,” journalist Marites Vitug writes in her book: “Shadow of Doubt—Probing the Supreme Court.” “Justices flip-flop because they do not study the case… completely rely on the ponente (or are lobbied)…. This is the shorthand explanation for this phenomenon.”

This Court upheld the gerrymandering of Camarines Sur. The first district ended up with a population of 176,383—far short of the constitutional minimum yardstick of a quarter of a million inhabitants. But that was enough to accommodate then President Arroyo’s son as congressman: Diosdado “Dato” Arroyo. “Mama” signed House Bill 4264 into RA 9716 on Oct. 12, 2009.

This “created a playground in Bicol for young Dato Arroyo,” noted constitutional scholar Joaquin Bernas, SJ. “This is a direction which makes the independence of the Supreme Court suspect.”

The Court agreed to Eduardo Cojuangco pocketing 16.2 million San Miguel Corp. shares, by dipping into coco levies wrung by martial law bayonets. “The biggest joke to hit the century,” dissented then Supreme Court justice, now Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales.

“We are not final because we are infallible,” wrote US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. “But (we are) infallible only because we are final.”  Will the Corona Court also remember who said: “Physician, heal thyself”?

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