How to stay as Chief Justice

Did you hear about the law graduate who finally passed the bar after failing the exams several times? He would pass all the subjects, top them even, except the one on Legal Ethics. He made it after taking a lawyer’s advice to just write in his ethics exam answers the opposite of what he would do in real life.

I remembered this joke as I listened to Chief Justice Renato Corona testify in his impeachment trial. If he gave the same answers he gave during the trial during an exam in Legal Ethics, he would probably flunk the test.

Over fifty years ago, the Supreme Court of the Philippines explained why dishonest government officials have no place in government. In the case of Nera v. Garcia (G.R. No. L-13160, January 30, 1960), the court ruled:

“The Government cannot well tolerate in its service a dishonest official, even if he performs his duties correctly and well, because by reason of his government position, he is given more and ample opportunity to commit acts of dishonesty against his fellow men, even against offices and entities of the Government other than the office where he is employed; and by reason of his office, he enjoys and possesses a certain influence and power which renders the victims of his grave misconduct, oppression and dishonesty less disposed and prepared to resist and to counteract his evil acts and actuations. As the Solicitor General well pointed out in his brief, ‘the private life of an employee cannot be segregated from his public life. Dishonesty inevitably reflects on the fitness of the officer or employee to continue in office and the discipline and morals of the service.’”

In 2009, the same Supreme Court dismissed an employee of the judiciary who wrote in official documents that she was single even if she was married. In the case of Faelnar v. Palabrica (A.M. No. P-06-2251, January 20, 2009), the court held: “It cannot be gain said that every person involved in the dispensation of justice, from the highest official to the lowest clerk, must live up to the strictest standards of integrity, probity, uprightness, honesty and diligence in the public service. We say it again: dishonesty is a malevolent act that has no place in the judiciary.”

In 2012, we have no less than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines admitting that he did not include 2.4 million dollars and 80 million pesos in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) when he had a duty to disclose them under the 1987 Constitution that he swore to uphold. Asked why, he claimed that dollar accounts are confidential under a 1974 law on foreign currency deposit accounts. With regards the hidden peso accounts, he explained that that he did not declare the 80 million pesos because it included funds of family members as well as corporate funds. For a lawyer who used to work at a prominent accounting firm, his claim that he could not understand the technicalities in recording assets and liabilities could only make me scratch my head in disbelief. 

The lawyers of the Chief Justice say that he does not deserve to be impeached because such failure to declare hundreds of millions of pesos in his SALN when he should have done so is not a high crime. And I wonder where material for jokes about lawyers come from.

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