Pattern of ‘block voting’ noted in Corona Court

THE INTEGRATED Bar of the Philippines (IBP) national officers published last Dec. 19, 2011, a three-fourths page ad in several national dailies calling for support to save the Supreme Court as an institution by stopping the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona. Its main argument in defending Corona was that the grounds for impeachment were basically Supreme Court decisions that could not make Corona individually liable as they were promulgated by a collegial body.

With all due respect to the national officers of the official organization of lawyers, this line of argument (“collegial act”) is not an absolute excuse. In a complaint against Justice Elvi John S. Asuncion of the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court held Justice Asun- cion liable for gross ignorance of the law in a collegial decision of a Court of Appeals division. In that case, Asuncion defended himself by arguing that in a collegial act of a division composed of three justices, the decision promulgated is not the act of his alone and therefore the other two justices should also be held equally culpable. In finding Asuncion liable for gross ignorance, the Supreme Court held that Asuncion’s excuse would be tenable only in ordinary circumstances.

The grounds of the Supreme Court decisions under Corona’s watch are not ordinary circumstances. Records show that when it came to ordinary civil, criminal and administrative cases, the justices’ votes, from the time Corona became its Chief Justice, were unpredictable. Clearly, in those cas- es, the collegiality of Supreme Court decisions could not be doubted because the individual justices evidently voted only according to their consciences. However, when it came to cases involving Gloria Macapagal-arroyo, like the recent vote on the TRO which favored her, an “alignment” or a pattern of “block voting” by the same justices could be discerned. In other words, the pattern of voting in cases involving Arroyo were as if “copied and pasted,” to borrow a computer term.

By the way, in the Asuncion case, respondent Asuncion was the chairman of the division. In the Corona impeachment case, the respondent is the Chief Justice.