De Castro tops JBC shortlist for chief justice

SUPREME Court (SC) Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-de Castro has topped the shortlist of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) for the next chief justice.

During Friday’s voting by the JBC, De Castro, the second most senior justice in the high court, garnered six votes.

SC Justice Diosdado Peralta also got six votes.

Tallying three votes and falling short by one vote to be shortlisted was SC Justice Andres Reyes Jr.

The position of chief justice became vacant after the ouster by

had accepted automatic nomination from the JBC.

De Castro became the most senior among the applicants after Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio declined nomination. He now sits as acting chief justice and JBC acting chairman. - the Department of Justice’s legal department as state counsel.

She became a justice and a presiding justice of the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan before reaching the high court.

President Joseph Estrada of corruption charges. She also wrote the ruling letting then Socio-economic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri to invoke executive privilege in the Senate in connection with a broadband deal between the government and China.

Bersamin penned rulings allowing the appointment by thenPresident Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of Renato Corona as Chief justice; the acquittal of Arroyo via demurrer to evidence; the grant of bail to former senator Juan Ponce Enrile; and the declaration of the ”pork barrel” of lawmakers and the Disbursement Acceleration Program of the Aquino administration as unconstitutional.

judge of Quezon City and a Sandiganbayan presiding justice.

of former president Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

president and now House Speaker Arroyo.

The JBC is constitutionally mandated to screen and vet nominees to the President for vacant posts in the judiciary and the