President Rodrigo Duterte has promoted Court of Appeals Associate Justice Ricardo Rosario as magistrate of the Supreme Court, completing the 15-member bench.
Rosario took over the seat vacated by Associate Justice Jose Reyes Jr. who mandatorily retired in September.
The Judicial and Bar Council has included Rosario, who repeatedly applied for the SC post, in its shortlists several times.
Rosario, who obtained his law degree from the Ateneo de Manila University in 1983, started out as a legal officer at the National Bureau of Investigation and went on to be a senior corporate attorney at the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System.
In 1994, he was appointed as senior assistant prosecutor in Quezon City.
He began his judicial career in 1997 when he was appointed as judge at the metropolitan trial court of Manila City, and subsequently became a regional trial court judge in Makati City. In 2005, he was appointed to the Court of Appeals.
Rosario will retire from the SC in 2028.