Sereno reshapes Poe case, grills Arthur Lim

SINGAPORE—Senators were criticized three months ago for outvoting Supreme Court justices at the Senate Electoral Tribunal. They are vindicated by Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno’s brilliant contrasts at the third Supreme Court hearing on Grace Poe’s disqualification last Feb. 2.

One’s parent must be Filipino for her to be a natural-born Filipino and run for president.

Carpio posited that foundlings like Poe cannot be natural-born because the Constitution states no special rule for them. He is the most intimidating strict interpreter since retired justice Vicente V. Mendoza. He built a simple ladder of arguments, each rung anchored on a law’s text, and climbed these to a seemingly inevitable conclusion. He asked just one question to destroy a case.

Sereno countered: The Constitution’s deeper principles grant abandoned babies full political rights. Her long discussions with broad policy contexts evoked a classroom.

Sereno spoke for almost three hours in the third hearing. Carpio spoke for 16 minutes.

Rounding out philosophies, Justice Marvic Leonen floated the controversial “political question” doctrine, which deems issues nonlegal and left to popular vote.

In the 2013 Reproductive Health Act hearings, Sereno drew scenarios such as whether she would be impeached for asking her clerk to use contraceptives if another pregnancy might kill the latter.

Carpio simply asked which line in the law was unconstitutional. The anti-RH lawyer fell awkwardly silent.

The Commission on Elections’ Rowena Guanzon opened the third hearing. She asserted that the Comelec may check “material misrepresentation” in Poe’s certificate of candidacy, even if this is different from disqualification. Guanzon filed a well-written comment despite the initial controversy over its authorization.

But it was Comelec Commissioner Arthur Lim who was grilled for over five hours. He pushed strict interpretation: Just read the law and discard broader principle as political overtone. Lim epitomized the unflappable gentleman litigator, artfully dodging but never retreating.

A former Filipino who reacquires citizenship under the dual citizenship law, he argued, can no longer be natural-born due to the break in citizenship. Sereno countered that that statute considers citizenship never lost, as affirmed by Sen. Franklin Drilon and its other authors. There is legally no break; it is more registration than reacquisition.

Carpio and Justice Arturo Brion agreed that the Supreme Court previously upheld this.

Lim replied, “We bow down before the interpretation of the Court if that would be the interpretation,” and moved on.

Sereno asked what if Lim’s baby was kidnapped and abandoned in a distant province. The test of justice is whether he would inflict foundlings’ injuries on his own child.

Lim parried that there is a missing baby with a known parent. Pressed, he agreed it would be ideal if a lost child grew up with full political rights, but “unfortunately, in this life, the ideal is not always what is real.”

Sereno repeatedly addressed Lim as her father’s friend. And he scored points by naming the sitting justice who penned each recent decision he invoked.

Sereno crafted a new argument for Poe’s citizenship.

In the 1976 Duncan case, an unwed mother left a three-day-old baby with a lawyer who refused to reveal her identity. In the 1963 Ellis case, a baby was born in a hospital but left four days later by her embarrassed unwed mother. These did not specify whether the mothers’ nationalities were recorded or in doubt. Ellis explicitly referred to the baby as Filipino.

Since courts may only rule on Filipinos’ adoptions, Sereno argues, the Supreme Court presumed foundlings are born Filipino.

Lim argued to Carpio that a court would issue orders for a baby of unknown nationality without necessarily declaring her Filipino. Brion called a technical foul: Adoption laws were not raised before the Comelec, and the Comelec error is the Supreme Court’s sole issue.

Sereno bolstered the weak link in Poe’s lawyers’ international law claim by counting how laws in 166 of 189 countries consider foundlings citizens. Carpio previously asked for this.

Carpio proposed that the need for a law leaves foundlings naturalized, not natural-born. Brion argued that treaties cite a right “to acquire” a nationality, not be born with it. I previously criticized how no one satisfactorily explained how Poe might become naturalized and registering a foundling should be different from acquiring citizenship one does not have.

Carpio stated he favors removing distinctions against naturalized citizens, but this is up to Congress. I note that under Lim’s argument, only a constitutional amendment could give foundlings full rights, and the better discrimination analogy is between foundlings who can identify a parent and those who cannot, not between foundlings and naturalized citizens.

Lim argued to Justice Mariano del Castillo that the earliest time Poe could be resident was when she “finally and firmly decided to cross the Rubicon” and reacquired citizenship in July 2006.

Before this, she may have been “testing the waters.” Even nonresidents may enroll children in Philippine schools. Residence would be indubitable when she renounced US citizenship in 2010 and any intent to return to the United States. But this sets high bars for overseas Filipino workers.

Justice Jose Perez reiterated his previous angle, favorable to Poe, that there can be no misrepresentation on an unresolved legal issue.

As the campaign period opens and ballots are printed with Poe’s name left in, beyond politics, we must ask ourselves how narrowly or broadly our Constitution and human rights should be applied.

Are you Team Tony or Team Meilou?

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