SC set to vote on 2 vacancies

MANILA, Philippines - The Supreme Court (SC) is set to deliberate today on candidates for the two vacancies in the High Court to be left by the retirements of Associate Justices Antonio Eduardo Nachura and Conchita Carpio-Morales this month.

In full-court session, magistrates will vote and choose among the 33 aspirants for the two posts and come up with a recommendatory list to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), the constitutional body that vets nominees for judicial posts and which has 90 days from vacancy to submit a shortlist to President Aquino. S

ection 1, Rule 8 of the JBC provides that it “shall give due weight and regard to the recommendees of the Supreme Court” in coming up with the shortlist.

The SC has also set on June 10 and June 17 the respective retirement ceremonies for Nachura and Carpio-Morales, according to SC spokesman and court administrator Jose Midas Marquez.

Nachura is one of the select few in public service who have served in the highest levels of all three branches of government.

Prior to his appointment to the SC, he had served in the 11th and 12th Congresses as representative of the 2nd district of Samar, in the Cabinet as chief presidential legal counsel and later, as solicitor general of the Philippines.

Carpio-Morales, on the other hand, holds the distinction of being the first woman magistrate to administer – on June 30, 2010 – the oath of office of a President of the Republic of the Philippines.

She is now vying for the Ombudsman post left vacant by the resignation of Merceditas Gutierrez last month, which came after her decision that paved the way for the latter’s impeachment in Congress.

Last month, the council interviewed 20 of the 33 aspirants for the two posts.

They were Court of Appeals justices Ramon Bato Jr., Estela Perlas Bernabe and Apolinario Bruselas Jr., Rosemarie Carandang and Stephen Cruz; lawyer Tomas Cabili; Court of Tax Appeals Justice Juanito Castañeda Jr.; CA justices Magdangal de Leon and Isaias Dicdican; law books author Francis Jardeleza and lawyers Eduardo Lizares and Sabino Padilla IV; Sandiganbayan Justice Alex Quiroz and CA Justice Bienvenido Reyes.

Also interviewed were CA Justice Jose Reyes Jr., businessman-lawyer and Bar topnotcher Rodolfo Robles, Bian, Laguna RTC Judge Marino Rubia, human rights advocate and Free Legal Assistance Group founder Pablito Sanidad, CA Justice Noel Tijam and deputy court administrator Nimfa Vilches.

The 13 other aspirants will no longer be interviewed by JBC since they were already interviewed by the council in July last year for the lone vacancy eventually filled by Associate Justice Lourdes Sereno, President Aquino’s first appointee to the SC.

They are: CA presiding Justice Andres Reyes Jr. and justices Hakim Abdulwahid, Mariflor Punzalan-Castillo, Japar Dimaampao, Remedios Salazar-Fernando, Portia Alino-Hormachuelos and Vicente Veloso; law professor and noted women’s right advocate Katrina Legarda, UP College of Law dean Raul Pangalangan, Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, University of the East College of Law dean Amado Valdez, Sandiganbayan Justice Francisco Villaruz, and CTA Justice Lovell Bautista.

Under the Constitution, an associate justice of the High Court could be appointed if he or she “is a natural born citizen, at least 40 years old, and must have been for fifteen years or more a judge of a lower court or engaged in the practice of law in the Philippines.”

An additional and less precise constitutional requirement, however, provides that the appointee “must be a person of proven competence, integrity, probity, and independence.”

It is in this second requirement where deliberations of the JBC members would center upon, Marquez stressed.