Justices must submit to public interviews
THE APPARENT unwillingness of Supreme Court magistrates to go through the traditional public interviews, revealed in an exclusive report by The Manila Times on Monday, came as a bit of a surprise; the public interviews are a rare window for citizens to peek into the judicial ethos of applicants for the highest judiciary position of the land.
As explained by Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), the constitutional body that vets judiciary applicants, bowed to the unanimous resolution of the Supreme Court en banc to waive the interviews for associate justices who have sat at the tribunal
The waiver of public interviews for senior magistrates - cess that could be immediately traced to the anomalous impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012. In the post-Corona court, the statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN), essentially a public wealth declaration, has become an ultimate test of integrity. Corona’s ouster found basis on his failure to declare his dollar deposits in a document that could be corrected as a matter of administrative routine.
Given that what Corona did was established by the Senate impeachment court as a high crime worthy of conviction and Sereno, was also kicked out through quowarranto proceedings for committing an even bigger infraction — her failure to submit a complete set of SALNs and lying about it.
Sereno herself broke established practice by giving speeches left and right like a cut- and- dried politician, exposing her views to open scrutiny.
The judicial norm, of course, is that upon joining the judiciary, judges and justices retreat into silence, and are heard, or more precisely, read, only through their decisions or separate or dissenting opinions. Political discourse is left to the Executive and Legislative branches of government,
The practice is sacrosanct to the federal courts of the United States, where justices are appointed for life. US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas carried it to the extreme, not even asking questions from the bench during oral arguments.
The justices’ retreat from public political dialogue is meant to ensure the delivery of justice, by assuring all parties of their impartiality.
This does not mean that justices can no longer give public speeches. They do so during university commencement rites. Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio pushed the envelop by joining the Philippine legal panel in the international arbitration case against Beijing over the South China Sea dispute, as a matter of nationalistic duty.
Public interviews are, thus, the only opportunity for Filipinos to examine judiciary applicants, even if they have long been serving at the Supreme Court. The excuse that the senior justices’ views are already known through their
ponencias or decisions is an incredible copout.
The move to exempt them from established JBC procedures becomes even more preposterous, as pointed out by a JBC member, retired judge Toribio Ilao Jr., when one recalls that applicants for lower courts are subjected to interviews.
We don’t think the senior magistrates, the so- called “Gods of Faura,” have anything to hide. In fact, Justices Andres Reyes Jr., Diosdado Peralta and Lucas Bersamin went through the JBC interviews for the vacancy created by the dismissal of Sereno, which then Supreme Court she retired earlier this month.
Certainly they don’t have problems with their SALNs as grave as Sereno’s. Or do they?