AFTER the turmoil surrounding the removal of the second top magistrate in the last six years, the appointment of Chief Justice Teresita Leonardo-de Castro is a welcome opportunity for the Supreme Court to move away from the divisive politics that began with the removal of Chief Justice Renato Corona in May 2012 and his replacement by Maria Lourdes Sereno in the same year.
In 2011, a vindictive President Benigno Aquino III threw his considerable political capital—and government resources—behind a coordinated campaign to vilify and eventually oust a chief justice with whom he did not see eye to eye. He replaced the chief justice, not with the most qualified or the most senior associate justice in line, but with the more junior Sereno, who he had appointed a mere two years before to the Supreme Court.
Sereno’s removal six years later was no less the product of political meddling, regardless of what the Palace says. This time, however, it was not senators who found the chief justice guilty in impeachment proceedings, but Sereno’s peers in the Supreme Court voting against her in a quo warranto challenge to her 2012 appointment.
It is a supreme irony that the ones crying foul today over the constitutionality of Sereno’s removal and her replacement by De Castro are the same ones who saw nothing wrong in Mr. Aquino’s brazen act of bribery to dangle millions of pesos is discretionary funds before the senators to entice them into convicting Corona.
In appointing De Castro, President Rodrigo Duterte picked the most senior aspirant from a shortlist submitted to him by the Judicial and Bar Council.
Critics of the decision have questioned the wisdom of appointing a chief justice who will occupy that post for only a month and three weeks, but nobody who looks at Chief Justice De Castro’s record can question her qualifications.
De Castro’s career in public service started on Feb. 19, 1973, when she served as a law clerk position in the Office of the Clerk of Court of the Supreme Court.
From January 1975 to November 1978, she served as a legal assistant and as member of the technical staff of the late Chief Justice Fred Ruiz Castro.
In December 1978, she moved to the Department of Justice where she worked as State Counsel I and rose from the ranks, culminating in her appointment in 1997 as Assistant Chief State Counsel.
She was designated as one of the international and peace negotiators of President Corazon Aquino and President Fidel Ramos from 1988 to 1997.
De Castro rejoined the judiciary as Sandiganbayan associate justice on Sept. 23, 1997 and became its Presiding Justice on Dec. 15, 2004.
During her incumbency, she spearheaded the establishment of the Computerized Case Management System and the adoption of reforms that contributed to easing of the court docket in the Sandiganbayan and to the professionalization of its workforce.
At the Supreme Court, De Castro is the working chairperson of the First Division, the chairperson of the Management Committee of the Judicial Reform Support Project, the working vice chairperson of the Committee on Ethics and Ethical Standards and of the Halls of Justice Coordinating Committee, Chairperson of the Committee on Computerization and Library, the Committee on Gender Responsiveness in the Judiciary, and the Special Committee to Draft Rules on Sexual Harassment in the Judiciary, and Member of the Supreme Court Internal Rules Committee.
During her stint as a Sandiganbayan justice, she penned the decision that convicted former president and now Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada of plunder. Ironically, in 2015, she also wrote the decision of the Supreme Court that dismissed the disqualification case against Estrada, saying he was eligible to run for Mayor of Manila.
Sereno, who illegally occupied the position of chief justice for four years, left the Court divided and in turmoil. If De Castro manages to repair that damage and bring the Court back to normalcy in the time she has left—and insulate it from further political interference—then she will have truly earned her place in history as the country’s first woman chief justice.