CHIEF Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno has sought the compulsory disqualification of Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-de Castro for “repeatedly manifested actual bias” against her.
In a motion, Sereno asked that De Castro be barred from participating in the deliberation and resolution of the quo warranto petition seeking her ouster, on the ground that she had already prejudged the issue concerning the validity of her appointment to the top post of the judiciary.
The chief justice earlier filed four separate motions for inhibition of Associate Justices Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Francis Jardeleza and Noel Tijam. All of them testified against the chief justice in her impeachment case pending before the House of Representatives.
“With due respect, the chief justice has reasonable grounds to believe that Justice Leonardo-De Castro had already prejudged the issue regarding the validity of the chief justice’s nomination and subsequent appointment in 2012,” Sereno said.
“It would be contrary to normal human experience for her [De Castro] to suddenly repudiate her conclusions that the chief justice was ‘disqualified,’ especially when her conclusions were made under oath,” she added.
The quo warranto petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida seeking to nullify her appointment as chief justice will be heard by the SC justices during oral arguments next week.
Quo warranto is a special form of legal action used to resolve a dispute over whether a specific person has the legal right to hold the public office that he or she occupies.
Sereno, who is on indefinite leave to prepare for her defense in the forthcoming impeachment trial before the Senate, said De Castro, under oath, had told the House committee on justice that Sereno was disqualified from being chief justice for failing to submit to the Judicial and Bar Council her Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth when she was a University of the Philippines law professor.
She cited Section 5, Canon 3 of the New Code of Judicial Conduct, which “mandates the inhibition of a judge who is unable to decide the matter impartially or who may appear to a reasonable observer to be unable to decide a matter impartially.”
Sereno alleged that De Castro had a “personal interest” in the outcome of the quo warranto case, having been a witness against her during the impeachment proceedings on the complaint filed by lawyer Larry Gadon.
“Her [De Castro] disqualification is thus mandatory under the pertinent provisions of the Canons of Judicial Ethics, the New Code of Judicial Conduct, the 1989 Code of Judicial Conduct, and the Internal Rules of the Supreme Court,” she said.
“Considering her high profile and spirited public participation in the impeachment proceedings against the chief justice, she should, with due respect, bear in mind that her decision ‘to sit or not to sit’ on this case will affect to a great extent ‘the all-important confidence’ of the public in the ability of this honorable court to render justice impartially,” Sereno said.