With two-and-a-half decades of judicial service to his credit, Chief Justice Peralta has spent the most years in the Judiciary among his peers.

The most senior of the associate justices in terms of number of years in the Judiciary was yesterday named as the new Chief Justice succeeding retired CJ Lucas Bersamin.

The Supreme Court yesterday received from the Office of the President its transmittal letter, dated 23 October 2019, on the appointment of SC Associate Justice Diosdado Madarang Peralta as Chief Justice.

With two-and-a-half decades of judicial service to his credit, Chief Justice Peralta has spent the most years in the Judiciary among his peers.

Chairman of the SC Third Division, he is also the most senior among the associate justices who applied for the top SC post in terms of tenure in the High Court. He was appointed to the SC in 2009.

He was the Chairman of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) since August 2018 when he began as member in 2011.

Chief Justice Peralta will mandatorily retire when he turns 70 on 27 March 2022.

The new top magistrate got all seven votes of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC).

He is the chairman of the SC Committee on the Revision of the Rules of Court, the committee Bersamin dubbed as the mother of all committees.

Peralta also served as chairman of both the 2014 Bar examinations and the Special Shari’ah Bar examinations.

Born in Laoag City, Ilocos Norte, Peralta started his career in government service in 1987 when he was appointed as Third Assistant City Fiscal of Laoag City.

He was assigned to the Prosecutor’s Office in the City of Manila in 1988 and later became the assistant chief of the Investigation Division of the Office of the City Prosecutor in the early part of 1994.

He joined the Judiciary in September 1994 when he was appointed as presiding judge of Branch 95 of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Quezon City, which was designated as a Special Criminal Court on Heinous Crimes and, later, Drugs Cases. He was promoted to the Sandiganbayan in 2002, and became its presiding justice in 2008.

On 13 January 2009, he was named as the 162nd Associate Justice of the SC. He was the third presiding justice of the anti-graft court to be appointed to the High Court.

As a prosecutor, he was recognized as the Most Outstanding Public Prosecutor of Manila for 1990-1991 by the city government and the Most Outstanding Public Prosecutor of the City of Manila in 1994 by the Department of Justice. He was also one of the five finalists for Outstanding Public Prosecutor Nationwide, given by the Foundation on Judicial Excellence in 1993.

As a trial court judge, he was awarded a Plaque of Commendation in 1999 by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Quezon City Chapter for his speedy and scholarly disposition of criminal cases. He was also awarded the 1999 Annual Pillars of the Criminal Justice System Award given on the First Founding Anniversary of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, and in 2001, was again awarded by the VACC for his continuous and consistent speedy disposition of criminal cases.

He was conferred the Special Centennial Awards in the Field of Criminal Law, given by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and the SC during the Court’s Centennial Celebration in 2001. Likewise, he was a recipient of the Judicial Excellence Awards (Chief Justice Ramon Avanceña Award for Outstanding Regional Trial Court Judge) by the Foundation for Judicial Excellence on 14 June 2002 which, providentially, was the same day of his appointment to the Sandiganbayan.

As a staunch advocate of continuous trial of criminal cases, he consciously decided cases within the reglementary periods, and in accordance with law, jurisprudence, rules of procedure and the Constitution. At the time he was promoted to the Sandiganbayan, he was able to dispose of 575 of the 600 cases he had inherited as a trial judge.

During his term as associate justice, and later presiding hustice, the Sandiganbayan registered the most number of cases decided on the merits because of the innovations he introduced, namely: stipulation on the testimony of witnesses, or adoption of affidavits and statement of witnesses as their direct testimony, subject to cross-examination, which were later adopted by other associate justices of the Sandiganbayan and incorporated in the Revised Guidelines for Continuous Trial of Criminal Cases.

His efficiency in case management and advocacy for speedy disposition of cases was again put to test when he became an Associate Justice of the SC in 2009 and inherited the most number of cases at about 1,128 judicial and administrative cases. Due to sheer diligence and passion for work, he was consistent as one of the top performers in adjudicating cases, which enabled him to reduce to about 300 cases to date, despite his various committee work and academic collaborations with the Philippine Judicial Academy.