“Their measured but forceful words remind us that Supreme Court decisions echo far beyond the moment that produced them”
THIS is the first of a six-part series on Sara Z. Duterte vs. House of Representatives, the Supreme Court En Banc’s landmark decision dated July 25, 2025, which struck down the Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Sara Duterte as unconstitutional.
Voting 13-0, the Supreme Court, through Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, ruled the impeachment violated the one-year bar under Article XI, Section 3(5) of the Constitution and breached the Vice President’s right to due process.
Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa inhibited, while Associate Justice Maria Filomena Singh was on leave.
The Court made clear its ruling does not clear the Vice President of the allegations. But under the Constitution, any new impeachment complaint can now be filed only on or after Feb. 6, 2026.
In this series, I will examine the Court’s new reading of the one-year bar, the stricter due process standards now imposed on the House, and what I see as a significant expansion of judicial power into territory long reserved for politics.
I will also look at the concurring opinions that shed light on the debates within the Court. Finally, I will reflect on what this means for how we hold the highest officials to account.
For the record, I have deep respect for the Justices – many of whom, including the ponente, I know personally. I do not doubt their integrity or independence.
My law firm, La Viña Zarate, and the organizations I lead – such as the Movement Against Disinformation and the Klima Center – bring human rights and environmental cases before the Supreme Court because we trust that we will be heard fairly.
Yet we cannot ignore the deep unease this ruling has stirred.
Retired Justice Adolf Azcuna, one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution, has warned the real casualty here is the accountability of public officials.
Prof. Carlo Cruz, a giant of Constitutional law teaching and scholarship, has compared Duterte vs. HOR to Javellana vs. Executive Secretary, the latter gave legal cover to martial law and whose shadow still haunts the Court’s legacy today.
Their measured but forceful words remind us that Supreme Court decisions echo far beyond the moment that produced them.
History, not headlines, will judge this ruling.
The Justices would do well to remember this as they consider the House’s motion for reconsideration.
For my part, I have always taught the inconvenient truth about impeachment: as practiced in the Philippines, it has never been the ironclad shield for accountability our textbooks claim.
Too often, its success has depended less on solid evidence than on raw presidential power and congressional arithmetic.
Corona was removed because Malacañang wanted him out.
Estrada was not convicted in the impeachment trial but his ouster led to a bad political outcome, in a ten year Arroyo presidency that made governance worst in our country.
The failed moves against Davide, Gutierrez, Sereno (who was later ousted by quo warranto), and Leonen show how impeachment can be turned into a blunt political weapon.
In the concluding column of this series, I will document and reflect on the terrible legal, governance, and political outcomes of past impeachments. We cannot be proud of them.
It has been said that bad cases make for bad law.
I believe Sara Duterte committed impeachable offenses and that a Senate trial would have exposed these for the nation to judge.
I wish the Supreme Court’s new safeguards had emerged from a case involving a good public servant targeted for doing what is right. If that were so, many of us would be applauding this decision today.
In any case, Duterte vs. HOR appears to be the Court’s attempt to install long-overdue guardrails on an impeachment process that has been too easily abused—transforming it from a purely political arena to one more firmly anchored in Constitutional rights.
But in doing so, has the Court gone too far? Has it built a wall of due process so high that it now shields powerful officials from the reckoning impeachment was meant to ensure?”
This is not just a lawyer’s question.
It goes to the very core of our fragile democracy.
Impeachment is neither purely legal nor purely political; it was always designed to be both.
By judicializing it further, the Court may have tipped the balance – protecting fairness for the accused but weakening the people’s ability to hold their highest leaders to account.
As we unpack this decision in the coming weeks, we must ask: Do we want an impeachment process reduced to technicalities, or one that remains a real – if imperfect – safeguard for a betrayed public trust?
Is there a more balanced path the Court can still adopt?
That is the inconvenient truth and the challenge Duterte vs. HOR lays before us all.
Facebook, X, Instagram and Blue Sky: tonylavs Website: tonylavina.com
