How they voted

Majority of the justices of the Supreme Court voted against ousted Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno in the three points of contention discussed in the special en banc session on Friday.

However, removing Sereno from her seat without undergoing an impeachment trial in the Senate “is a legal abomination,” Associate Justice Marvic Leonen said in a dissenting opinion.

Apart from the 8-6 vote that upheld the validity of the quo warranto petition filed against Sereno, the magistrates also voted 9-5 on the issue of whether Sereno violated the Constitution with her incomplete submissions of her statements of assets, liabilities and net worth or SALNs before joining the high court.

The nine who voted against Sereno on the SALN issue were Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and Associate Justices Teresita Leonardo de Castro, Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Francis Jardeleza, Noel Tijam, Samuel Martires, Andres Reyes Jr, and Alexander Gesmundo.

The five other justices—Associate Justices Mariano del Castillo, Estela Perlas Bernabe, Marvic Leonen, Benjamin Caguioa and Presbitero Velasco —did not give an opinion on this issue.

On whether the quo warranto petition was the proper remedy to remove Sereno from office, the justices voted 9-5 as Velasco, De Castro, Peralta, Bersamin, Jardeleza, Martires, Tijam, Reyes and Gesmundo concurred.

The dissenters were Carpio, del Castillo, Perlas Bernabe, Leonen, and Caguioa.

Tijam penned the decision on the 8-6 main vote ousting Sereno, with De Castro, Peralta, Bersamin, Jardeleza, Martires, Reyes, and Gesmundo concurring.

Carpio, Velasco, Del Castillo, Bernabe, Leonen and Caguioa were against it.

However, Leonen stressed that even if Sereno “has failed our expectations, quo warranto, as a process to oust an impeachable officer and a sitting member of the Supreme Court is a legal abomination.”

He said that “a better reading of the Constitution requires us to read words and phrases in the context of the entire legal document.”

Leonen, an appointee of former President Benigno Aquino III like Sereno, noted that the general grant of jurisdiction for quo warranto actions under Article VIII Section 5 (1) of the 1987 Constitution “should be read in the context of the provisions of Article XI Sections 2 and 3, as well as the principles of judicial independence and integrity inherent in several sections of the Bill of Rights.”

Article VIII Section 5 (1), he added, provides that the high court “exercise original jurisdiction over cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls and over petitions for certiorari, prohibition, quo warranto and habeas corpus.”

On the other hand, Article XI Sections 2 and 3, which Leonen said “should be read in the context of the first mentioned provision,” enumerates the officials that can only be removed by impeachment, the specific grounds, and who has jurisdiction to initiate all cases of impeachment.

“This petition should have been dismissed outright and not given due course. It does not deserve space in judicial deliberation within our constitutional democratic space,” he pointed out.

The majority decision, Leonen said, created a bad precedent that put at risk those who dissent against the “privileged and the powerful.”

“It creates a precedent that gravely diminishes judicial independence and threatens the ability of this Court to assert the fundamental rights of our people. We render this Court subservient to an aggressive Solicitor General. We render those who present dissenting opinions unnecessarily vulnerable to powerful interests,” he warned.

“Granting this petition installs doctrine that further empowers the privileged, the powerful, and the status quo,” Leonen said.