THE ESSENTIAL THING

The Judicial and Bar Council (JBC)

Ma Merceditas N Gutierrez, Ombudsman

The 1987 Constitution created the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) as the official body that would recommend to the President who to appoint as judges of lower courts and as justices of the appellate courts, including those of the Supreme Court.  The JBC is supposed to compile, from a long list of candidates for vacant positions in the judiciary, a short list of three nominees for every vacant position therein.  From these three nominees, the President picks one to actually appoint to the vacant position.

The gentle-mannered but strict disciplinarian former Chief Justice Roberto Concepcion, of the martial law years, inspired the creation of the JBC.  It was meant to take the political games of give-and-take and favors out of the nomination and appointment of judges and justices.  At that time, the appointment of judges and justices was still subject to the approval of the legislator-composed Commission on Appointments, which made its own demands and loyalty checks of those who wanted to be confirmed.

I remember the fatherly Pompeyo Diaz, who, before he became the highly-respected dean of the Ateneo Law School during my time, was the presiding justice of the Court of Appeals.  A stickler to principles just like Chief Justice Concepcion, he refused to approach any politician for endorsement to the much-coveted position of Supreme Court justice.  The result was that he never was appointed to the highest tribunal, where his own father, Justice Anacleto Diaz, had been.

The JBC is at present composed of eight personalities in all – three ex-oficio members (the justice secretary who is from the executive department; 2 legislators from each house of Congress) and four regular members (one from the ranks of law professor; one from the lawyers’ foremost association, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines; one from the private sector and one from the pool of retired Supreme Court magistrates).  Their chairman, also ex-oficio, is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Aligned with its vision as an “independent, efficient and a pro-active sentinel of judicial service, guided only by the principles of integrity, excellence and competence, and unfettered by the shackles of friendship, relationship or other (extraneous) consideration,” the JBC’s principal mission is to recommend appointees to the judiciary only persons of proper competence, integrity, probity and independence, and to insulate, as best as it could, the nomination process from undue politicization. 

To this principal objective, the JBC added its own self-committed task to speed up the processing of applications for vacancies, especially in places of the country where the case load is particularly heavy.  The JBC has also added to its tasks the promotion of transparency and public awareness of matters involving the nomination and selection process in the council..  To realize this, the JBC has issued rules directing the wide publication of the list of applicants to the judiciary, and where the invitation is also given to the public to help the council nominate well by sending it information about any applicant in the list.

The information may be anything of critical and material value to the council.  It may conceivably even consist in such personal anecdotes or apocryphal stories that show the character and moral fiber, or lack of them, of the applicant.  If the information could be checked or verified, or is of such nature as could lead to further relevant discoveries, then so much the better.  In any case, the council may, if it sees the need therefor, conduct an open or discreet investigation into the matters divulged to it by the public.

Because the dispensation of justice is utterly impressed with public interest, the public should take a very active hand in the process that ends in who gets appointed to the posts that settle issues of right and wrong among the citizenry, and between them and the state.  Indeed there is a lot they can do to help the JBC do its job of nominating good lawyers to the judiciary well.  The lawyering community is of particular usefulness in this regard, since its members know one another.  They know who are corrupt and have no qualms about resorting to improper or even out-and-out shameful methods (if revealed) to get what they want.

In closing it may be observed that lawyers who are brilliant and overly ambitious sometimes exhibit an openness to corruption and a tendency toward impropriety, either of which makes them unfit to the exulted position of judgeship and, more so, of the magistracy. You may find these lawyers among those who were once involved in hard-fought and, yes, dirty elections, such as those in homeowners associations in the various subdivisions and condominiums all over the country, those involved in elections in civic organizations like the Rotary or the Lions, or in elections in the Integrated Bar of the Philippines.

As Ombudsman, I urged the general public to help in any way they can the JBC in its task of nominating to the President only applicants to the judiciary who, by their legal knowledge, experience and values, would most likely help our country move forward on its platform of justice in all areas of societal life.  ■

Originally published in the February 12-13, 2010 issue of Business Mirror.