De Lima is no legal luminary — Topacio

Lawyer Ferdinand Topacio on Monday told former senator Leila de Lima to stop considering herself a legal luminary, saying her legal interpretations were consistently flawed.

Topacio, PDP Laban spokesperson on impeachment matters, was responding to De Lima’s remarks on the Supreme Court’s request to the House of Representatives for clarification regarding the pending cases questioning the constitutionality of the impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte.

De Lima, now a partylist representative, had reportedly characterized the Court’s action as an “overreach.”

“Leila de Lima once again shows her utter superciliousness to the Honorable Supreme Court (SC) when she kept babbling on regarding its alleged ‘overreach,’” Topacio said,

He pointed to De Lima’s past conduct, citing a petition for contempt filed against her for defying a temporary restraining order in the Arroyo v. De Lima case, as well as instances where she was cited for forum shopping.

Topacio expressed disbelief that a member of the bar, despite previous reprimands for transgressions, would “again thumb her nose at the SC by violating the sub judice rule anew and commenting on the merits of a pending case.”

Topacio questioned the respect an ordinary person could expect from De Lima if she disrespects the High Court as an “officer of the court.”

He said, “At any rate, De Lima should stop entertaining the illusion that she is a legal luminary because her interpretation of the Constitution is always dead wrong.”

He said the SC is “perfectly within its rights to inform itself of anything to aid it in determining whether or not an agency or instrumentality of government has committed a grave abuse of discretion, a doctrine that every first-year law student knows.”