Justice Bernardo Pardo ends service to country

Today the Supreme Court will hold a program to mark the occasion of the retirement of Associate Justice Bernardo P. Pardo. Justice Pardo was the son of two prominent doctors who were both selected as pensionados to the United States – Dr. Leopoldo Pardo and Dr. Catalina Policarpio. Pardo finished high school with honors at the Letran College in 1950, finished his Bachelor of Laws at the University of Santo Tomas in 1955, passed the bar in the same year with a grade of 81.55% at a time when the bar exams had its highest mortality rate in 14 years. Only a little more than a fourth passed the exams.

Pardo started working early. Even before he passed the bar, he was already working in a very prominent law office, that of the late Sen. Jose W. Diokno. In 1962, President Diosdado Macapagal appointed him in the Solicitor General’s Office of the Justice Department and on the recommendation of said office, he was appointed as City Judge of Manila, a post he served concurrently with his position as Solicitor. The Justice and Court Reporters Association honored him with a citation as "Solicitor of the Year" because of the exemplary way he handled citizenship cases. Two years later, the Philippine Constabulary named him as their 68th PC Anniversary Awardee for the way he prosecuted those charged with subversion. He was promoted to Assistant Solicitor General and later elevated District Judge of Caloocan City and Manila. He also taught law in his alma mater, UST, and the University of the East.

In 1980, a very controversial case was raffled to Pardo’s sala. It was the case of the Cojuangco family of Tarlac that had obtained the Central Bank approval of a $2.1-million loan to acquire Central Azucarera de Tarlac and another multimillion-peso loan from another government agency with the condition that the 6,341-hectare hacienda would be sold at cost to highly qualified soil tillers. A decade passed and this was not complied with. In December of 1985, Pardo gave his decision ordering the Cojuangcos to subdivide the hacienda into small lots and sell the lots at cost to the farmers. The Cojuangcos appealed and when Mrs. Cory Aquino became President, the Solicitor General asked for and was granted dismissal of the case because Pres. Aquino had issued a Presidential order to provide "a stock distribution plan for farm workers in lieu of redistribution."

In 1995, Pardo was appointed to the chair of the Commission on Elections. During his term, the voters’ list was computerized and even the "hot election spots" in Mindanao had clean and orderly elections. Then in 1998, President Estrada made him an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Suffice it to say that during these years in office, he penned 420 Supreme Court decisions.

It was Horace Binney who said, "The world has produced fewer instances of truly great judges than it has of great men in almost every other department of civilized life." We sincerely believe that Pardo belongs in the list of our great judges.