While the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte appears set in motion, her legal team may seek last-minute intervention from the Supreme Court (SC) to delay or block the proceedings, Partylist Representative-elect Leila de Lima said Tuesday.

De Lima, who will join the House prosecution panel when the 20th Congress opens on 28 July, is already anticipating that Duterte’s lawyers will contest the legality of the impeachment complaint on the grounds that it cannot carry over from the current Congress to the next.

"We are already expecting that. It is not far-fetched to question that in the Supreme Court because it's really a new, open, noble issue. We don't have a precedent like that yet,” she said in an interview.

Duterte’s powerhouse legal team, Fortun, Narvasa, and Salazar Law Firm, petitioned the SC on 18 February to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the Senate from acting on her impeachment case, alleging that the articles of impeachment were defective and rife with constitutional infirmities.

The VP alleged that the House of Representatives deliberately circumvented the one-year ban mandated by the Constitution when it filed the fourth impeachment complaint in February, just two months after the first three separate complaints were lodged against her in December.

Earlier, veteran poll lawyer Romulo Macalintal voiced the similar concern, saying that if the Senate will “revive” the impeachment in the next Congress by commencing the trial, it will be considered “as if it were presented for the first time,” potentially breaching the Constitution, which prohibits the filing of more than one impeachment case against the same official within a one-year period. 

He cited Rule 44 of the Senate, which stipulates that all unfinished business, such as bills and resolutions, shall terminate upon the adjournment of Congress, although it “may be taken by the succeeding Congress as if presented for the first time.”

Macalintal further explained that if the impeachment will proceed on 2 June, it will automatically die since the present Congress is set to adjourn sine die on 30 June, leaving the Senate with insufficient time to conduct a full trial against Duterte.

However, De Lima and another House prosecutor, Iloilo Rep. Lorenz Defensor, argued otherwise. They asserted that the impeachment is sui generis—a class of its own—and therefore not considered as a legislative matter.

“The impeachment process is not an ordinary legislative function of Congress, that when a new Congress takes over, you start from scratch,” De Lima averred. 

Defensor, in the same vein, pointed out that the trial could cross over in the 20th Congress since the Senate is a continuing body, unlike the House, whose members’ term automatically expires after three years or with the start of new Congress.

“I have to disagree with Atty. Macalintal. The Senate is a continuing body; it’s a continuing institution. And remember that an impeachment trial is not a legislative process; it’s sui generis. We’ve been repeatedly saying that,” he said in a separate interview. 

Both De Lima and Defensor contended that the framers of the Constitution intentionally separated the impeachment provisions from the ordinary lawmaking rules outlined in Article VI or the Legislative Department, noting that impeachment is a national inquest.

“It’s not just about the senators and the congressmen. The impeachment process is about protecting the people and the country from officials who are possibly not morally fit to [hold] office. So, a technicality such as the end of the legislative term should not stop the impeachment process in the Senate,” Defensor stressed.

In fact, he said, a cross-over of an impeachment is allowed by the United States, where the Philippines’ impeachment provisions were modeled after.

He cited the impeachment case of then-US president Bill Clinton, who was impeached by the US House of Representatives in December 1998 during the 105th Congress, but was only tried in the Senate in January 1999, after the new Congress convened.

VP Duterte, accused of graft and corruption, betrayal of public trust, and culpable violation of the Constitution, among others, is scheduled to be tried in the Senate impeachment court after the 20th Congress convenes in late July. 

A two-thirds vote—or at least 16 of the 24 senators—is required to convict and permanently bar her from holding public office, derailing her bid for the presidency.

She left the country on Monday for Qatar and the Netherlands and will be back on 4 June, two days after the House prosecutors formally read the seven articles of impeachment in the Senate during the reopening plenary session on 2 June.