by Diego Morra
Does anyone think that Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Marvic Leonen need a career change at this time? Many are saying he would be a fantastic addition to the House of Representatives or the Senate (which, by its very Latin name, is supposed to be reserved for the wise and elderly, not to brother-brother, brother-sister or mother-and-son combinations.) Given Leonen’s excellent ponencia on the Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio impeachment case, he could even tutor members of the bicameral Congress on how to craft elegantly-worded legislative proposals that could pass muster any judicial scrutiny.
Seriously, Leonen ponencia, which was unanimously upheld by the SC en banc and now becomes part of the law of the land is also a classic example of how the tribunal’s mistakes could be allowed to pass and gets etched in stone, not subject to protracted debate and petitions filed by Citizen Juan. By dismissing the impeachment case on technicalities, the tribunal also failed to look into the principal issue legal scholars are now raising about the plenary approving the articles of impeachment for transmission to the Senate. Leonen said there was no approval by the plenary but media coverage and articles written about the process prove otherwise.
By not admitting this mistake, the High Court led by SC Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo made short shrift of the arguments raised by retired chief justices and associate justices that the current illustrious magistrates failed to appreciate the gravity of Leonen’s mistake, one that experts consider sufficient to render the decision invalid. We do not think the Leonen ponencia was written in haste, considering the fact that batteries of lawyers assist SC justices in editing, rewriting and deliberating on draft decisions. These confidential lawyers are supposed to intellectual sleuths, and some may even be censorious, but all of them function as editors, not only of case law, legalese and boilerplate language but also of lexemes, logical fallacies and dubious assertions.
What it reminds us of is the 2010 issue about Leonen failing to acknowledge the 2004 work of Dr. Owen Lynch entitled “Weaving Worldviews: Implications of Constitutional Challenges to the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997.” As a scholar and faculty member of the University of the Philippines College of Law, then Dean Leonen should be a stickler to the rules covering legal treatises. Yet, the sleuths of Malcolm Hall ripped him for plagiarism, the kind of reporting mishap that happens when quotation marks are not deployed, the names of original authors are not acknowledged and paragraphs are reproduced word-for-word. The good professor confessed, saying it was an “honest mistake” and offered to quit, apparently not irrevocably if he really wants to “walk the talk” rather than “talk the walk.”
Interestingly, the Leonen plagiarism case happened as he led the charge of 37 UP law faculty members against SC Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo for alleged plagiarism in the Vinuya v. Executive Secretary case. Leonen was the spearhead of the “Restoring Integrity”” movement against del Castillo. Had this movement persisted, Leonen would have been a target as well. Despite the counsel of the SC at that time against the language employed by Leonen, et. al. against del Castillo, the SC’s nemesis would later join the High Tribunal as an appointee of the late President Noynoy Aquino.
Eight years after joining the SC, Leonen himself was subjected to an impeachment complaint filed by an equally controversial barrister on Dec. 7, 2020 for alleged culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust for his failure to to decide at least 37 cases assigned to him within 24 months. Leonen was also accused of delaying the resolution of cases assigned to him as chairman of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET.) The complainant also scored his failure to file his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) when he was a UP professor. On May 27, 2021, the House justice committee voted 44-0 to dismiss the complaint against him. The Lower House adopted Resolution No. 2068 junking the complaint for insufficiency in form.
Given all these facts, the High Court might have thought that Associate Justice Leonen was the most appropriate ponente for the Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio impeachment case. Perhaps Leonen considered his own impeachment case as judicial harassment or a ploy hatched by those he has wronged but the Duterte case was certainly not an occasion for judicial overreach or an opportunity to contravene the key Constitutional provision that the rules covering impeachment are not for magistrates to impose. The High Court’s decision not to entertain additional pleadings on the matter is actually forcing Congress to exercise its role in checking the judiciary, implying that the tribunal would have to navigate the treacherous waters of the legislature to get their money.
Nonetheless, congressmen say that since Leonen has ventured into legislation through a decision that imposes strictures on the conduct of impeachment as a political process and as an approach to kick out corrupt, abusive and traitorous officials, then he might as well run for a legislative post and see how he fares in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. Those two chambers may be more than civilized with his “honest mistakes,” whether they come few or far between, or they pour in like torrential rain.#
