In letters to the editor of the Inquirer, some brave souls dared to go where angels (or devils, read: lawyers) fear to tread. Reacting to Supreme Court chief public information officer Theodore Te’s challenge (“Gripe vs SC inaccurate, baseless,” Opinion, 11/25/14) to cite specific examples of the “conflicting decisions” spewing out of the Court’s different divisions, one writer gave one (“SC’s ‘conflicting decisions’: A specific example,” Opinion, 12/13/14).
Te can deny to high heavens any knowledge of conflicting decisions, but the fact of the matter is, such conflicting decisions do exist. How can anyone argue against a verifiable fact? Lawyers, to earn their keep, can always find ways to prosecute or defend their clients’ cases on the basis of such “conflicting decisions,” leaving it up to the trial court to choose which one to follow and then taking a chance that the Supreme Court may still arguably go one way or the other.
In reality, there is hardly a “well-settled jurisprudence” anyone can still bank on. So many exceptions or variations devalue and denigrate principles of law laid down in earlier decisions of the Supreme Court sitting as a division or en banc. That leaves a really wide-open window for “gapangan” or “influence-peddling.” Truth to tell, if the Court’s rulings were only consistent on a given issue, such “adventurism” among litigious lawyers could be minimized. Contempt would be a good deterrent to that.
And how is such consistency achieved? Simple. As netizens love to say: LOL, IGM by clicking a mouse and checking on past decisions of the Supreme Court on the same subject matter! Of what use are the Court’s IT experts and legal researchers if they can’t do that very important job?
—JEREMIAS H. TOBIAS, jeremhech@gmail.com