Come to think of it. The Supreme Court nowadays is looking more and more like the House partisans that displayed nary a compunction to nip right in the bud not one but three impeachment attempts against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Remember that Arroyo’s congressional allies let the former president off the hook despite for example her public [...]
How not to be a ‘political’ Supreme Court
October 21, 2010 By 24 Comments
What Sparks had written about her being perched now on a “land of zero politics,” while envisaging from that supposed vantage point the state of our nation, particularly caught my interest. She must be working now as a fulltime staff in the Supreme Court, I wondered (well, members of the Court ordinarily claim their office [...]
Final and infallible
May 20, 2010 By 163 Comments
The Supreme Court is neither final nor infallible. This constitutional truism is somehow easily illustrated by the manner the legal precedents imposing a ban on “midnight appointments” have been unceremoniously undone by the now infamous De Castro decision. On March 17, 2010, the all-Arroyo-appointed majority justices in De Castro have allowed a lame duck Gloria [...]
Yes, we can!
March 28, 2010 By 18 Comments
In Constitutional Law litigation, there’s such a thing as the dynamics of “political settlement.” This happens in most cases when any of the three branches of the government exercises what is called statesmanship, or at times, just simple pragmatism, to avert a constitutional crisis. During the 2000 US presidential elections, it was however Al Gore, [...]
De Castro decision a threat to RP democracy
March 20, 2010 By 33 Comments
In a democracy, votes like money can get things done. President Arroyo for example has successfully overcome several attempts to remove her from office by impeachment because the numerical superiority of House members loyal to her proved to be too overwhelming to allow the constitutional process go beyond preliminary stages. Of recent, Senator Manny Villar, [...]
The House, the beauty and the beast
June 6, 2009 By 33 Comments
Following the first attempt by the House of Representatives to constitute itself into a Senate-less constituent assembly in December 2006, I posted the following commentary: Since the Spirit of ’86 that had driven Marcos into exile, People Power has ensconced itself as the Great King in the wilderness of Philippine politics. As such, even if [...]
SC must look to the Senate’s lead
December 12, 2008 By 2 Comments
The decision today of a unanimous Senate passing a resolution, which declares “that any attempt by the House of Representatives to unilaterally propose amendments to, or revision of, the Constitution without the approval by three-fourths of the Senate voting separately is unconstitutional,” shows that self-interest is a great motivator. The honorable senators must have come [...]
Bloggers’ historic act in Arroyo impeachment, nay or aye?
November 14, 2008 By 102 Comments
I have blogged a number of times here in FV criticizing the decision of the Supreme Court on the MoA-AD case arguing in the main that the development of the law on separation of powers could be heading further in the wrong direction as a consequence of the decision. Among others, I raised the following [...]
The other autocrats
October 22, 2008 By 27 Comments
Among the responses to Marcosian authoritarianism the Filipinos have decided to entrench in the Constitution are: 1) the expansion of powers of the Supreme Court, 2) the placing of additional curbs to executive powers via more specific provisions of congressional control, and 3) the augmenting of the Bill of Rights to strengthen the protections of [...]
SC MoA-AD ruling, ‘a burlesque of the Constitution’
October 20, 2008 By 11 Comments
The Philippine Supreme Court is right from the very outset in stating that the essential question before it in Province of North Cotabato v. GRP (October 15, 2008) is “the extent of the powers of the President in pursuing the peace process” (emphasis in the original). The Court also cited the correct case law (Pimentel [...]
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