The Supreme Court has designated Associate Justice Diosdado M. Peralta as working chairman of the Court’s Committee on the Revision of the Rules of Court, one of Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin’s 4-point agenda for the judiciary.
In a speech before the University of Santo Tomas community, Bersamin stressed that the committee on the revision of the Rules of Court “is the most important of all the committees in the Supreme Court” since aside from deciding cases, updating the rules of court “is very basic, if not the other important function of the Court under the Constitution.”
The top magistrate said that he “cannot entrust this Committee to any other person except to the most competent and that is no other than a Thomasian—Justice Peralta.”
The Chief Justice Bersamin wants to update the “procedural rules to make them embody and be attuned to the technological developments,” which tops his initial 4-point agenda for the Judiciary.
Admitting that the current Rules of Court “still contain provisions that institutionalize delays,” Bersamin vowed to “make the judicial system responsive to the public need for quick dispensation of justice.
Peralta, for his part, accepted the challenge and vowed to have a revised Rules of Court in Civil Procedure by the third quarter of 2019.
He disclosed that he is looking at “simplifying rules in civil procedure, including amending the rules on evidence, pleadings and reglementary period.”
Peralta added that “all pleadings must be evidentiary in nature, and there must be faster service of summons.”
Peralta has been an associate justice of the Supreme Court for almost ten years now. He was already twice shortlisted by the Judicial and Bar Council for the position of Chief Justice when Chief Justices Teresita De Castro and Bersamin were successively appointed.
Prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice Peralta was an associate justice, and later, the presiding justice of the Sandiganbayan. He first joined the judiciary as a regional trial court judge in Quezon City, after serving as Assistant City Fiscal of Laoag City and Manila.
The other members of the Committee are SC Associate Justices Francis H. Jardeleza, Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, and Alexander G. Gesmundo. Also included as members are Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra, Philippine Judicial Academy Chancellor Adolfo S. Azcuna and Vice Chancellor Romeo J. Callejo, Sr., and law professors Francis Ed Lim, Tranquil S. Salvador III, and Amador Z. Tolentino, Jr.