Bravo to the SC justices for DAP, PDAF rulings
Where does this 84-year-old “high blood” stand in the present conflict between the executive department and the judicial department?
I am for principles and the basic foundations of the law, society and government that underlie the present, exigent issues involving motives, interests, procedures, practices and policies related to the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), or even the earlier voided Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).
Thus, I am for judicial independence—first asserted by Sir Edward Coke, chief justice of the King’s Bench in the perilous time of King James I (“divine right of kings”) of the despotic Stuart dynasty, in 17th-century England. With Coke, “Neither the King nor Parliament was superior to the law.” I am also for the doctrine of judicial review, deftly enunciated in Marbury vs Madison (1803) by Chief Justice John Marshall to the chagrin of US President Thomas Jefferson and his newly elected Republicans: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” In brief, Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law, also the cardinal principles of separation of powers (Locke—“And thus the legislative and executive power come often to be separated”) and, of course, checks and balances (Montesquieu—“It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power”).
Hurrah to the Sereno Court! Bravo, justices, for the landmark Supreme Court rulings on the PDAF and the DAP, particularly the 13-0 decision in the latter case.
One, however, should not set one department against another, for free society composed of different minds and motives is dynamic. So is democracy. And “The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience” (Justice Holmes). Also: “strife is the spice of life.” (Was this Heraclitus’?) Ours is still a young, growing nation.
—EDMUNDO H. ESCALANTE.
retired judge, former president,
IBP Sorsogon Chapter,
Gubat, Sorsogon
