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(Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno was the guest speaker of
the Quijano de Manila Symposium on June 20, 2007, at the
Cherry Blossoms Hotel in Manila. He delivered a speech
on a wide range of issues concerning the judiciary, and
later answered questions from journalists and other
guests, in an open forum moderated by writer Adrian
Cristobal.)
Adrian
Cristobal:
The Supreme Court has been in the news lately,
principally because in these perilous times, we think of
the Supreme Court as “the enemy of political
persecution.” We tend to think of the three branches of
government—Executive, the Judiciary and the
Legislative—as contradictory to each other. But in
truth, in the civic religion of democracy, there is only
one supreme entity which is the Constitution and within
the Constitution is embodied, if I may speak,
theoretically, the trinity of the Legislative, the
Executive and the Judiciary. In an ideal society, they
all work together, given as coequal persona. Except
that, in these times, there has been too much
controversy—the question of human rights and the
so-called emergency proclamation.
Chief
Justice Puno:
My lifetime training as a lawyer, as a judge, as a
justice is to ask the questions to the parties in a
litigation, including questions which I myself cannot
answer. This morning, however, I’ve been asked to [do
the] reverse: answer questions about our system of
justice.
There is
a lot of concern about our system of justice, and
rightly so. All over the world, there is a new interest
in the dispensation of justice, [and this is] caused by
a lot of factors. Primarily, however, it is one
consequence of the victory of democracy over other
ideologies. The sustainability and success of democracy
demands, among others, a system of justice that is
independent, fair and fast.
This
demand constrained us to undertake a Judicial Reform
Program. This was initiated by retired Chief Justice
Hilario G. Davide Jr. It is impossible to give a
comprehensive discussion of the innards of this program
given our time constraint. With your leave, I [will]
focus on a more specific area of concern of the Reform
Program—the concern with our backlog of cases, and the
slow [resolution].
Let me
start with some grim statistics.
Case
load, judges and processing times
As of
2006, the total case load of our Judiciary was 754,360
cases. Of the total, the SC accounts for 6,528 pending
cases; the CA, 21,054 cases; the Sandiganbayan, 2,120
cases; the CTA, 730 cases; the RTCs, 360,402 cases; the
MTCs, 362,000; and the Shari’a Courts, 414 cases.
As of
last count, we have 1,682 justices and judges in 2,153
courts nationwide.
The
average time for the different courts in deciding cases
are as follows: for the Supreme Court 1.43 years; the
CA, 1.32 years; the Sandiganbayan, 6.6 years; and the
Court of Tax Appeals, 2.6 years. In the first- and
second-level courts, the duration considerably varied. A
significant portion of the surveyed cases ranging from
13 percent to 33 percent remained undecided.
The
causes of backlogs
We have
diagnosed the causes of our case backlogs: (1)
jurisdictional structures; (2) the judicial process; (3)
insufficient case load and case management systems; (4)
weak accountability of justices and judges; (5) severe
inadequacy of resources; (6) deficient court technology;
(7) behavioral inclinations of judges, court personnel
and lawyers; (8) judges and court personnel competency;
(9) deficiencies in other pillars of justice; (10) case
complexity; and (11) jurisprudence, culture and economy.
Strategies
Let me
now come to some of the strategies we have adopted to
grapple [with] the problem of case backlog.
(1) Our
courts are overwhelmed with cases. The population (of 88
million) is served only by 2,153 courts, and 25 percent
of these courts are vacant. Every year, new laws are
passed by Congress which create new rights and
obligations, a lot of which breed litigation and
aggravate our clogged system of justice.
Given
this reality, our first strategy is to prevent, as much
as possible, the inflow of new cases into our court
system. This is done two ways: first, courts strictly
enforce the conciliation system in our barangays. Our
law mandates that differences involving members of the
barangay should not be filed in courts without
undergoing conciliation by the head of the barangay.
They involve petty cases, but they are many, and our
efforts to prevent their entry into our regular courts
help declog our dockets; second, we encourage the
liberal use of arbitration as a private system of
justice. It is a happy development that private and
commercial contracts in our country provide that
disputes between the parties are subject to arbitration.
So it is with collective bargaining agreements between
labor and management. We are crafting the rules giving
these provisions more teeth. Among others, resort to
arbitration shall be made a precondition to a court suit
where there is a provision to that effect in the
contract of the parties. And, in case the parties still
go to court after arbitration, the review role of the
courts will be very limited. Hopefully, this private
system of justice will complement the public system and
help ease its clogged system.
(2) Next
strategy: we dealt with the excessive cases pending in
regular courts. For those cases that already entered our
courts, we follow a three-pronged strategy: (a) use our
alternative dispute resolution system whereby parties to
a case are ordered to undergo conciliation and mediation
before the dispute is tried on the merits. With the help
of Canada, we have trained and are continuously training
mediators for this purpose; they are under the courts’
control and supervision, and [they have] a very high
rate of success in settling disputes. Efforts of
settlement do not end with the mediators. In the course
of the case especially at pretrial, we still impose on
the judge the duty to [help] parties [settle] their
disputes. (b) simple cases are governed by summary rules
of procedure. With these rules, judges resolve cases
with the least resort to technical rules of evidence.
Thus, these summary rules prohibit the filing of motions
to dismiss motions for bills of particulars, motions for
extensions of time and postponements, motions for
reconsideration, and so on; and (c) we discourage
unnecessary and dilatory challenges to interlocutory
orders and penalize meritless appeals. We have been
plagued by an overly liberal system of appeals whereby
an interlocutory order of a judge in the course of the
case can be questioned before a higher court on the
broad ground of grave abuse of discretion. This puts on
hold the trial of cases while the interlocutory order,
often insignificant, undergoes review. Records show
these challenges are mostly without merit and the
precious time [for] resolving them causes extreme
prejudice to the speedy disposition of cases.
(3)
Third, the clogged dockets are compounded by inadequate
buildings to house courts and antiquated facilities. The
Judiciary is the third branch of government but it gets
only 0.88 percent (not even 1 percent) of our national
budget. This financial constraint contributes to the
slow disposition of cases.
How did
we address this problem? Happily, we have partners in
judicial development like the World Bank, the Asian
Development Bank (ADB), and other financial institutions
that [aided us] through loans, donations and grants to
meet infrastructure problems, especially our shortage of
halls of justice.
We also
instituted reforms to improve our trial court case
management system. This Caseflow Management Project is a
computerized system that sharply shortens processing
time for resolving cases through effective monitoring
and strict observance of time limits in the disposition
of cases from filing to decision. To complement these
efforts, we also initiated the Case Administration
Information System Project. This provides a
comprehensive database of cases in the trial courts for
information reporting and analysis. It enables our Court
Administrator to monitor the performance of trial
courts, especially in their speedy resolution of cases.
We hope to extend this project to all our trial courts.
Both
projects, when pilot-tested, showed a marked improvement
in the volume and velocity of case disposition by trial
judges.
(4)
Fourth, we have contended with the biggest problem of
all: searching for the right judges. It is self-evident
that you can have the grandest halls of justice, the
most modern court equipment; but if you have the wrong
judges, your judicial system will never be right.
Our
problem was initially twofold: one, how to reverse the
reluctance of good lawyers to join the bench due to
noncompetitive compensation. And two, the training of
sitting judges; the upgrading of their skills; the
cultivation of their moral virtues so they can dispense
justice with independence, with fairness, with
efficiency; and, more important, with reasonable speed.
The first problem went away when Congress enacted a law
increasing the salaries of judges. It enabled us to fill
up many vacant positions in the trial courts, a major
cause of clogging of cases. To date, 25 percent of our
trial courts are still without judges, but in time we
should be able to further shrink this problem. The
second problem—the continuous training of judges—is a
much more tenacious headache.
We
assigned this particular problem to our Philippine
Judicial Academy, an institution attached to our Supreme
Court and mandated to provide quality education to our
incumbent judges. First, the academy focused on the
development and enhancement of the skills of judges
manning courts of general jurisdiction, or our
generalist judges. Special training was given to them to
be effective mediators, to handle pretrial proceedings,
to manage on quick time, the trial on the merits of
cases, to write decisions and resolutions, and to
execute judgments without delay. All these were intended
to develop their skills, which will help in cutting the
time to decide cases. Second, the academy concentrated
on sharpening the talents of special judges presiding
over special courts—to decide cases involving corporate
rehabilitation, intellectual property violations,
election contests, and family disputes, to mention some.
The complexity of the issues litigated in these cases,
as well as their high impact on our progress, demand
their special treatment and speedy disposition. Special
modules on how to train these judges were crafted; thus,
we developed benchbooks on law and economics, evidence,
and election litigations for their guidance. Some were
sent abroad to keep them abreast with the latest
wrinkles in their fields of specialization. The records
will show that cases in these special courts were
decided faster than usual cases.
The
Supreme Court also did its share in easing the backlog.
Our standing committee on the revision of our rules of
court set up subcommittees of experts who enacted
special rules for trying cases involving corporate
rehabilitation, violence against women and children in
conflict with the law, election protests, etc. One
objective of these special rules is to facilitate
resolution of these special cases. The new rules
simplified the complex rules, tightened time limits and
punished dilatory tactics. On the whole, they gave more
powers to the judges to control the proceedings—a
significant shift from their role as neutral umpires.
Their performance is especially monitored by the Office
of the Court Administrator. To help judges in research,
we established an e-library which contains all the
decisions of the Supreme Court, laws, international
treaties and executive issuances. It is the first
online, fully searchable library research facility in
our country.
Finally,
we have not spared ourselves from this backbreaking job
of eliminating our backlog cases. In the Supreme Court,
we established a Committee on Zero Backlog. It has
prioritized, for early decisions, cases pending with us
for more than two years. By its reckoning, some 200
cases belong to this category. As of May 15, 2007, 358
of these cases have been resolved.
Conclusion
There is
no easy, instant solution to case backlogs. Solving it
demands the most elastic patience and perseverance.
Be that as it may, I am delighted to report that the
case load of our courts has declined from 841,553 in
2001 to 753,360 in 2006. This may be a small battle, but
small battles ultimately win wars. We hope to prevail in
this war against case backlog, and win fast, for we are
aware that one sure way of losing this war is to win it
slow.
Open
Forum
Cristobal:
Let us begin with a question from (Malaya’s) Jake
Macasaet.
Macasaet:
Does the court find the present Judicial and Bar Council
(JBC) as the better way of selecting members of the
court instead of having nominees confirmed by the
Commission on Appointments (CA)?
Puno:
[Let’s
go to] before the creation of the JBC, before Edsa 1.
Under the 1935 Constitution, followed by the 1973
Constitution, appointments in the Judiciary came from
the Office of the President and they were confirmed by
the Commission on the Appointments. All through the
years, the experience with that kind of a CA was not a
very happy one. I think that is one reason why
immediately after Edsa 1, the commissioners appointed by
President Aquino to draft the new Constitution modified
the manner of appointing the members of the Judiciary.
This was the result of their study on various models in
other parts of the world. Their objective was, of
course, principally to minimize the politicalization of
the Judiciary; and of course, to get the best and the
brightest from the legal profession to join the
Judiciary. Ultimately, they created this Judicial and
Bar Council composed of eight members and the membership
is supposed to reflect the interest of various
stakeholders in our justice system. And so, you have the
JBC being chaired by whoever is the sitting chief
justice and you have a representative from the Executive
department (secretary of Justice) and two
representatives from Congress—a senator and a
congressman. You have a member who represents the
Retired Justices Association of the Philippines; another
member who represents academe—the Institutes, Schools
and Colleges of Law; and one representing the Integrated
Bar of the Philippines—in other words, the legal
practitioners; and a member representing the other
nongovernment associations.
So, if
you look at the composition of the JBC, it’s supposed to
reflect the diverse interests of all stakeholders in the
judicial system. Of course, they are all appointed by
the President. Well, the main difference is that this
time, the appointments are no longer confirmed by the
Commission on Appointments. The question is, is this a
better system? Of course, this is a proposition that is
highly argued. You know that there are some movements to
return these powers to the Commission on Appointments.
There is also a movement to restudy the system, so that
its internal workings can be further strengthened. There
is also a move to adopt a new system, considering new
models in other jurisdictions. But I know the present
system in the JBC is not perfect. It has resulted in
some appointments that do not make us entirely happy. As
I said, there is a new examination of the internal
workings of the JBC.
One
project being undertaken by the JBC is a crafting of the
rules on a “points-system.” In other words, under this
project, these factors that would be considered by JBC
members in proposing appointments would be categorized
and assigned specific points. If this system is
followed, there would be less subjectivity in the choice
of nominee. I have also suggested to the JBC that the
system of voting not be secret. This way, perhaps there
will be more transparency and responsibility on the part
of members.
We hope
to approve all these innovations in one month.
Inday
Varona:
A couple of months back at a round table, you talked
about the SAL (statement of assets and liabilities) of
justices which we know the former two chief justices
refused to release to media—you said you are amenable to
it pending the crafting of guidelines. Have the
guidelines been crafted, who’s crafting them, will media
look forward to finally seeing the SALs of the Supreme
Court Justices?
Puno:
We have asked the help of some agency’s persons. For
instance, we asked for assistance from the academy from
other stakeholders so that, you know, the contradicting
concerns can be properly addressed.
The main
concerns, of course, are, on one hand, the need for
transparency and on the other, the fear that this could
be misused in order to harass the members of the
judiciary.
Fernandez:
About three years ago, one of our Mindanao
correspondents wrote about the severe manpower crisis in
courts in parts of the ARMM, specifically in Sulu. But
from your report, it seems you have been able to deal
with what you called “the biggest trial of all—the
search for the right judge.” You reversed or at least
limited the vacancies in the trial courts down to only
25 percent. May we know from what high percentage was
that? And what is your target? When do you hope to fill
up at least, maybe 90 percent, of all courtrooms?
Puno:
Most of these 25-percent vacancies come from the
Regional Trial Courts and the Metropolitan Trial Courts.
These are the courts especially situated in far-flung
provinces, especially in provinces where you have a very
serious problem of peace and order. Hopefully we can
still bring down this percentage of unfilled salas down
to 15 and 10 percent in two years. It’s impossible to
literally fill them up because of these problems. Of
course, we are hampered by that constitutional
requirement that for every vacancy, we have to look for
at least three qualified persons to nominate to the
President. Sometimes it’s difficult even to find one.
Prof.
Benito Lim:
A
general concern for you is the very simple issue of “No
permit, no rally.” I was wondering whether the court can
find a judicious way to balance the concerns of our
citizens to exercise the right to assemblies, speech, as
well as expression of their grievances against the
concern of local officials for smooth flow of traffic.
Puno:
That question has bedeviled all courts in the democratic
world, because that involves the fine balancing between
liberty on one hand and national security on the other.
We all know that in balancing these conflicting
interests, there is no static point. Sometimes the
requirements of the time demand that we tilt the balance
in favor of liberty; [sometimes], in favor of national
security.
So, I
cannot give you a dogmatic answer on where the point of
the balance should be and where it will move in the
future. This all depends on the exigencies of the time.
Vitangcol:
You discussed the case backlog and the efforts of the
Supreme Court to reduce that—one of which is the
creation of the Zero-backlog Committee. As everybody
knows, it is the litigants and lawyers—who are directly
in the battlefront and who are directly affected by this
backlog. What is the composition of the Zero-backlog
Committee, and is there already a mechanism in place by
which the ordinary litigants and the lawyers would be
able to channel their inputs to the Committee?
Puno:
This Committee on Zero-backlog is composed of all the
Justices and run by the Clerk of Court of the
Philippines. The strategy is quite simple—inventory all
these cases, look at their aging, and give high priority
to those that have aged for more than two years—and
there’s quite a considerable number. So they are
prioritizing the disposition of these cases and our
time-line is two to three years. That is how serious it
is.
Cristobal:
There’s a question here from the oldest journalist in
the country. His name is Mr. Arthur Sales. As far as I
can gather, [he is asking] whether the Supreme Court
would consider issues affecting globalization. Because,
as Speaker De Venecia has always complained, the Court
has [overreached] in deciding on economic issues. Is
that correct?
Puno:
Again,
this is a criticism that has been hard on the Court—that
in some cases the Court has strayed into the economic
domain, a domain that is beyond its expertise and beyond
its jurisdiction.
As a
general proposition, I agree that on matters of economic
policy the court should take a laissez faire attitude—a
hands-off policy—because economic policies belong to the
nonjudicial domain, more specifically, to Congress and
the President. So, as a rule, that ought to govern the
jurisdiction of the Court vis a vis the jurisdiction of
the political branches of government.
But
there are cases where the courts are called upon to
intervene. And they do this in the discharge of their
constitutional duty—to interpret the laws as well as to
interpret contracts involving the rights and obligations
of the parties. Sometimes the decisions in these cases,
the task of interpreting the laws, the task of
interpreting contracts, would have a severe fallout on
economic matters. In other words, you have that kind of
a situation where the courts cannot turn down the
exercise of its jurisdiction and yet the effects of the
decision would have far-reaching effects on the economy.
Those are the difficult cases.
Well,
one case that is cited [is the Manila Hotel case]. I
dissented in that decision but regretfully the dissent
lost.
So, that
is the situation. But overall, you know some critics
could name four, five, six cases where they say the
courts should not have assumed jurisdiction. But look at
the big picture, we decide not only hundreds but
thousands of cases and the critics can only point to a
handful of cases. I think the court still has a good
batting average.
Varona:
When you
were talking about special courts, I noticed you didn’t
mention the special courts for murdered activists and
journalists which were promised a couple of months back.
What’s the status of the program to have special courts
for political killings and media killings?
Puno:
Yes, we
have established the special courts to handle these
so-called extrajudicial killings. Indeed, we have
established these courts throughout our jurisdiction.
But again, as I keep on emphasizing, courts are passive
receptacles of these kinds of cases. We have to await
the filing of cases and unless the cases are filed, we
don’t have a role in solving these cases. We are
[meanwhile] moving toward another direction. We are
looking at the plenitude of the rule-making power of the
Supreme Court. Under the 1987 Constitution, the
rule-making power of the Constitution has been expanded.
So now we can, on our own, make rules that will advance
and protect the constitutional rights of the people. And
we can, to our mind, exercise this rule side by side
with the legislative power of Congress.
So now,
you look at the judicial remedies existing in the
landscape. Let us say you have a missing person. What is
your remedy? You file a petition for a writ of habeas
corpus. The court orders, say, the return of the habeas
corpus—meaning, orders the police, the military or
whoever is in custody to produce the person of the
missing person. The return [of the writ] simply says, we
don’t have the custody, we cannot locate the missing
person and that ends the case.
Question: is that a sufficient legal remedy in the
context of our time? Well, the question answers itself.
But the further and bigger question is what is now the
more appropriate remedy? As I said, we shall be looking
at the solution to this problem. We are studying the
parameters of this new power of the Supreme Court to
promulgate rules. We are taking a tiptoe attitude on
this matter because we also do not want to be criticized
as usurping the legislative power of Congress. And we
also do not want to be crafting rules that would not be
implementable on the part of the police, the military
and the other lawful authorities. So again, we have to
do a lot of balancing on this one. We have been
consulting not only experts domestically but even
experts from abroad. In fact, this afternoon we’ll have
a delegation from the European Union and they are ready
to help us [by briefing] us on the models in other
jurisdictions, especially in Europe.
Adrian
Cristobal Jr.:
I am Che Cristobal from the Intellectual Property Office of
the
Philippines.
My
question, sir, is related to your answer on the
judiciary’s policy-making function. I think, when it
comes to individual liberties against state power, your
Court or this Supreme Court has established its clear
position. Likewise with economic policy, I think your
answer makes it clear also that they do have
implications on economy.
My
question is about social justice. Historically, the
Court has been strong on social justice—in labor
legislation in the early 20th century. I’m just
wondering if lately, under your Court, what the position
would be when it comes to social justice. And, follow up
to that, has there been any significant decision in the
past decade or so on social justice?
Puno:
Again, a more comprehensive discussion of that problem
would take a lot of time. But, you know, you have to
look at rights from two perspectives. First, you look at
civil and political rights—these rights are protected in
the Bill of Rights. Basically, the Constitution says the
government is prohibited from violating or curtailing
these rights. In other words, the protection is in the
prohibition.
Now, you
look at the other kind of rights, the social and the
economic rights. What is called upon by the Constitution
in the protection of these social and economic rights?
Basically, the government is not prohibited from doing
anything. On the contrary, the government is mandated to
do something positive to promote social and economic
rights. What are these? Basic right to health, housing
and so on and so forth.
And so,
when you come to the enhancement of social and political
rights, you have other considerations to seriously take
into account. For instance, what is the capability of a
particular government to enhance the social and economic
rights of the people? If you have a poor developing,
undeveloped country, would you impose the same kind of
standard on that kind of government to enhance these
social and economic rights, as opposed to a more
developed country?
In other
words, the duty of the government in that instance would
depend on the resources of that particular country. So
it’s very difficult to have a universal standard in the
promotion of socioeconomic rights. So we should be able
to look at the different perspectives of rights—civil
and political rights on one hand, social and economic on
the other.
But of
course I agree that rights are indivisible and this is
self-evident. As I say, in the Constitution you can
guarantee the freedom of movement, the freedom of
locomotion of a person. But how can that be exercised by
a pauper? How can a pauper go to
Paris and sip champagne? You can have the freedom to travel,
but where is the money to travel? So all these rights
are holistic.
Cristobal:
In other words, Mr. Chief Justice, the Supreme Court in
spite of the indivisibility of rights, cannot force any
government to be less corrupt, because if the government
is not corrupt, the resources are ample to promote
social justice.
What do
you think, Mr. Chief, Justice about media’s tendency to
comment on subjudice cases?
Puno:
Well, again, times are changing. The old rule is that
when a case is subjudice, everybody is prohibited from
commenting. But once more, we have to look at that
problem in a context of the time. You know, that old
rule evolved in Western jurisdiction where you have the
jury trial. But over time, there has been a relaxation
of that rule; the case law on the matter and the
argument that has been advanced is that fair comments or
even unfair comments need not necessarily influence the
decision of a judge. And perhaps, especially so in the
Philippines where our courts are manned not by jurists
but by judges who are experts in looking at the
evidence, in interpreting the law, and therefore who are
less influenced by extra-record and extra courtside
comments coming from various sources. And that is the
reason why the rule is evolving and we see now a
relaxation of the rule.
Of
course, there is a modification being followed by some
judges. And this is where there is a danger that the
disposition of the case will suffer from too much
adverse publicity. The judge can issue a gag
order—prohibit the parties, especially the lawyers, from
trying the case in the media.
And I
mentioned that only to emphasize that there is an
erosion of that old strict rule on subjudice.
Lim:
The
Supreme Court has always deferred to the government when
it comes to issues of national security. Will the Puno
Court, for instance, give a blank check to the
government on warrantless arrests, search and seizure
without court order? Will there be a blank check?
Puno:
Of course, there will be no blank checks on this matter.
In fact, such a blank check would be a violation of the
rights of the people and violation of the Constitution.
And I like to think that on the matter of liberty, the
Court has been quite generous in protecting the
individual rights and liberty of the people. |
