Somebody has got to have the final say

Sec. 1, Art. 8 of the Constitution explicitly vests the judicial power in the Supreme Court and such lower courts as may be established by law. It proceeds to define the judicial power as the power to settle controversies involving rights that are legally enforceable. The implication is obvious: For good or ill, the Constitution has seen fit to lodge the power to settle justiciable controversies in the courts and courts alone, not because they are infallible, but because somewhere down the line, there must be an authority that must say what the law is. We may disagree with the ruling of a court, but we must never defy it. Any other scheme will result in making the law a matter of personal opinion and cause more harm than good.

The second President Aquino and his allies in the House of Representatives seek to undo this great principle. The hard evidence for this is nothing less than the articles of impeachment they have sent to the Senate against Chief Justice Renato Corona. They are openly reviewing the acts of the Chief Justice and his court in several cases which are not to their liking, assuming a power that is not theirs under the Constitution. Even at the height of its unpopularity in the 1930s, the power and authority of the US Supreme Court was never usurped in this way. Are not the proponents of impeachment themselves committing a culpable violation of the Constitution?

A president who can have a chief justice impeached because the decisions of the court are adverse to his interests will ultimately hold the entire Judiciary hostage to his wishes. “The high feelings of the moment doubtless will be satisfied,” Justice Frank Murphy said in his dissenting opinion in re Yamashita 327 US 1. “But in the sober afterglow will come the realization of the boundless and dangerous implications of the procedure sanctioned today.”

—MARIO GUARINA III,

retired Court of Appeals associate justice,

Sao Paolo Street, Better Living,

Parañaque City