The Supreme Court
She became member-in-charge upon the request of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre concerning the transfer of the venue of the Maute case outside of Mindanao without the the en banc, she opted to discuss it over lunch.
Associate Justice Francis Jardeleza painted Sereno as a Chief Justice who abused her position at the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), and seriously undermined his constitutional right to due process. Sereno acted as accuser, judge and executioner when she did not inhibit from the JBC proceedings after opposing Justice Jardeleza’s appointment on an issue of integrity, and then forced the imposition of a rule which required unanimity. This abuse of power was echoed by retired Associate Justice Arturo Brion, who was polite enough not to call the act malicious on its face, but practically laid the predicate for anyone to conclude that such move was pregnant with malice.
In addition, Justice Jardeleza further presented Sereno as unethical, even to a point that her act amounted to - formation about an issue that was being litigated in an international venue, and for which Sereno and the court had no business in interfering, and to which she should not have access to, more so used it adversely against him.
Sereno’s supporters are accusing the justices of undermining the high court’s integrity, yet they turn a blind eye on the following.
A court with integrity does not allow any of its members to misrepresent any of the other members, or worse, the en banc. It also does not tolerate someone to blatantly violate its internal rules in unilaterally acquiring jurisdic which the exceptions stipulated do not apply. It also respects the power of the en banc, and would never tolerate its power to be diminished by allowing an issue that has serious implications on national security and the safety
A court of integrity does not tolerate any of its members, more so the Chief Justice, to be a party, or worse, to take the lead, in the wanton abuse of prerogative that led to the denial of a right to due process.
And a court of integrity should be the last institution to allow any citizen to commit acts amounting to treason.
The en banc has no precedent to rely on for removing a Chief Justice that has compiled in her curriculum vitae such a list of actionable offenses. And the Republic cannot stand helpless and be held hostage by the absence of such precedent, and the invoking of a culture of omerta, if not of collegial courtesy, in relation to the offenses of members of the court.
In a republican system of checks and balances, the power of government is limited by mechanisms the source of legitimacy and ultimate logic of which is the sovereign Constitution. Any political science major would know that a Constitution is a limit to the power of government in order to protect citizens’ rights, and to serve their interests, in as much as citizens are always sovereign.
may not be elected, but they pass through the scrutiny of - tion proceedings, even as they can also be impeached by the same representatives of the people.
Members of the judiciary, while appointed by the President, are in fact vetted by an unelected body that limits the President’s exercise of his power to represent the sovereign Filipino people. It is only through the impeachment process that they can be held accountable for their acts.
Far from undermining the integrity of the court, the Associate Justices who have already appeared, and the others who will soon appear, at the House justice committee hearings, are in fact asserting and preserving the court’s integrity by taking part in a process that upholds the people’s sovereignty.