The Supreme Court has appointed retired Associate Justice Arturo D. Brion as chancellor of the Philippine Judicial Academy, the Court’s education arm.
Brion will take over the post when the term of office of retired Associate Justice Adolfo Azcuna as PhilJA chancellor ends on May 31.
Under Republic Act No. 8557 that created PhilJA, Brion will serve as chancellor for two years, a term of office that can be extended by the SC.
Azcuna was appointed chancellor in 2009 and has served that post since then.
PhilJA was created by the SC in 1996. In 1998, it got its mandate under RA No. 8557 which institutionalized the academy as “training school for justices, judges, court personnel, lawyers, and aspirants to judicial posts.”
PhilJA has a governing Board of Trustees which is composed of the Chief Justice as ex-officio chairman; senior associate justice as ex-officio vice chairman; the chancellor of the academy; the presiding justices of the Court of Appeals and the Sandiganbayan, the Court Administrator, the president of the Philippine Judges Association, and the president of the of the Philippine Association of Law Schools as ex-officio members; and a judge of a first level court as appointive member.
Brion has served all three branches of government. In 1984, he was elected member of the Philippine National Assembly as Mambabatas Pambansa. He was secretary of labor for two years and was eventually appointed as associate justice of the Court of Appeals before assuming the position of SC associate justice until he retired in 2016.
He finished his law degree at the Ateneo de Manila University School of Law in 1974 and passed the bar examinations in the same year as topnotcher with a grade of 91.65 percent.
At the law school, he had the distinction of being cum laude, class valedictorian, and awardee of the Golden Leaf Award, Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, and First Honors Gold Medal.
He obtained his Master of Laws degree at the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto, Canada in 1994, with Labor Law as his main area of study.