Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Castillo (Justice del Castillo), to suit the arguments laid down in said
decision.
The manner in presenting the arguments and the language used therein,
the Court believed, were inappropriate considering its signatories are
lawyers. Thus, the Supreme Court issued a Show Cause Resolution
directing respondents to show cause why they should not be
disciplined as members of the Bar for violations of the Code of
Professional Responsibility. Conversely, compliance to such resolution
was unsatisfactory, except for one respondent.
DOCTRINE: The right to criticize the courts and judicial officers must be
balanced against the equally primordial concern that the independence of the
Judiciary be protected from due influence or interference. In cases where the
critics are not only citizens but members of the Bar, jurisprudence has
repeatedly affirmed the authority of this Court to discipline lawyers whose
statements regarding the courts and fellow lawyers, whether judicial or
extrajudicial, have exceeded the limits of fair comment and common decency.
FACTS:
Shortly after the promulgation of the Supreme Court decision in
Vinuya v. Executive Secretary (the Vinuya decision), the case involving
the Filipino comfort women during the Japanese occupation, the counsel
for the petitioners therein filed, first, a Motion for Reconsideration
reiterating the fundamental responsibility of states in protecting its
citizens human rights specifically pertaining to jus cogens norms and,
second, a supplement thereto asserting that the Vinuya decision was
plagiarized from different sources and that the true intents of the
plagiarized sources were twisted by the ponente, Justice Mariano del
One can infer from a reading of the majority Resolution which portions
of the text the UP Law Faculty Statement draw the charge of direct
contempt, i.e. (a) the accusation that an extraordinary act of injustice has
been committed against the brave Filipinas who suffered abuse during a
time of war; (b) the casting of the decision as a reprehensible act of
dishonesty and misrepresentation by the Highest Court of the land; (c)
the further attempt to educate the Court on how to go about the review
of the case; (d) imputations of deliberately delaying the resolution of the
Vinuya case; (e) the dismissal of the petition on the basis of polluted
sources; (f) alleged indifference to the cause of petitioners; (g) the
supposed alarming lack of concern of the members of the Court for even
the most basic values of decency and respect, but it must still identify
the specific paragraph of Section 3, Rule 71 of which the UP Law
Faculty appears guilty.
This Court, as complaining party, must state plainly how its ability to
view the motion for reconsideration of the Vinuya decision can be
affected in any way by the UP Law Faculty's statement. It must also
state plainly how its ability to enforce its future orders would be eroded
by the release of the UP Law Faculty Statement.
The second paragraph of the text clearly indicate the Facultys
passionate desire to see the torch of justice carried with honor and
dignity by the highest court of the land, its steps unfaltering from moral
or professional weakness.
The timing of the show cause order; the implication in the related
Decision that the complainants in the plagiarism charge against Justice
del Castillo are hypocrites; the needling over a small matter such as
submission of a dummy vis--vis the original signed copies; and the
apparent effect that the submission of the Statement had on the Court
all of these betray a Court that is bent on seeing itself redeemed not
by hard and honest work, with the undertaking of proper remedial
actions for when a member is in breach of ethics, but by showing who,
in the land of lawyers, has power.
Carpio, J:
I find the Compliance of the 37 legal scholars satisfactory and therefore
see no need to admonish or warn them for supposed use of
disrespectful language in their statement commenting on a public
issue involving the official conduct of a member of this Court. The
majoritys action impermissibly expands the Courts administrative
powers and, more importantly, abridges constitutionally protected
speech on public conduct guaranteed to all, including members of the
bar.
It appears that the evil consequences the UP law faculty statement will
supposedly spawn are (1) the slurring of this Courts dignity and (2) the
impairment of its judicial independence vis--vis the resolution of the
plagiarism complaint in Vinuya. Both are absent here. On the matter of
institutional degradation, the 12-paragraph, 1,553-word statement of
the UP law faculty, taken as a whole, does not exhibit that "irrational
obsession to demean, ridicule, degrade and even destroy the courts and
their members" typical of unprotected judicial criticism.
On the contrary, the statement, taken as a whole, seeks to
uphold the bedrock democratic value of keeping judicial processes free
of any taint of dishonesty or misrepresentation. Thus, the UP law
faculty statement is far removed from speech the Court has rightly
sanctioned for proffering no useful social value, solely crafted to vilify its
members and threaten its very existence.
The conclusion that the UP law faculty statement disrespects the Court
and its members is valid only if the statement is taken apart, its
dismembered parts separately scrutinized to isolate and highlight
perceived offensive phrases and words. This approach defies common
sense and departs from this Courts established practice in scrutinizing
speech critical of the judiciary. People v. Godoy instructs that speech
critical of judges must be "read with contextual care," making sure that
disparaging statements are not "taken out of context." Using this
approach, and applying the clear and present danger test, the Court
in Godoy cleared a columnist and a publisher of liability despite the
presence in the assailed news article of derogatory yet isolated
statements about a judge. We can do no less to the statement of the
members of the UP law faculty, who, after all, were impelled by nothing
but their sense of professional obligation to "speak out on a matter of
public concern and one that is of vital interest to them."