House to tackle impeach case vs SC justice

MANILA, Philippines -  The House committee on justice is scheduled to tackle today the impeachment complaint against Supreme Court Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo for allegedly committing plagiarism in the decision rejecting a petition filed by Filipino “comfort women” during the Japanese occupation.

Committee vice chairman and Ilocos Norte Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas said the panel would discuss if the impeachment complaint filed by a women’s group and endorsed by 11 lawmakers last year is sufficient in form and substance.

“(House) Members will have to consider that 11 members, which is more than 10 percent of the required one-third vote required to send case to Senate for trial is there and endorsed the complaint,” Fariñas told reporters.

Del Castillo was accused of plagiarizing the ruling in the case of Isabelita Vinuya of Malaya Lolas Organization vs. former foreign affairs secretary Alberto Romulo where the SC rejected the petition of at least 70 comfort women to compel the Philippine government to seek an explicit apology and reparations from Japan.

Lawyers Harry Roque and Romel Bagares, who represented the comfort women who had been garrisoned in sex houses during the Pacific War, claimed Del Castillo plagiarized at least three sources.

These are an article published in 2009 in the Yale Law Journal of International Law, another piece published in 2006 in the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law and a book published by Cambridge University Press in 2005.

The SC, following an investigation by its ethics committee, however dismissed the complaint last October for lack of merit saying what happened was just “a case of bad footnoting” by Del Castillo’s researcher.