Sotto flags ‘judicial overreach’ in SC ruling on Sara impeachment

Senate President Tito Sotto III did not mince words and explicitly accused the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday of "judicial overreach" and of breaching the separation of powers over its decision to uphold, with finality, its 2025 ruling that declared the impeachment case of Vice President Sara Duterte "unconstitutional."

Sotto argued that the high court wrongly interpreted the rules on impeachment, particularly regarding calendar days and adjournments, thereby amending the Constitution in effect—a power exclusively vested in Congress.

“They made the impeachment process difficult… What they did was extreme; this was on another level. They made a mess of the Constitution,” Sotto told reporters in Filipino. “Power should not be abused. As I’ve said, this tantamounts to [judicial] overreach; they have no right to amend the Constitution.”

As a result, Sotto, who had been historically reluctant to Charter change, changed his tune and declared that he would now back efforts to amend the Constitution to prevent the SC from inadvertently infringing on Congress's internal affairs.

He disclosed that the Senate intends to meet with the House of Representatives in February to discuss steps to address concerns that the SC is encroaching on the lawmaking process. 

"Because if the Supreme Court can tamper with the Constitution, then so can we, as we are the ones empowered to do so,” he asserted.

The Senate leader also agreed with speculations that the high court deliberately made the impeachment process extremely difficult to their own advantage, as the SC justices themselves are impeachable officials. 

“My thinking would be they have [a] different agenda, they were pursuing a different objective, focus. That’s why that happened.” It’s hard to point fingers, but that's a possibility, and I’ve heard that from other people.”

The SC on Thursday unanimously affirmed its July ruling that found the House’s fourth impeachment case against Duterte unconstitutional, null, and void ab initio (from the beginning) for violating the one-year bar rule, which prohibits the filing of more than one impeachment case against the same official within a one-year period.

Recall that VP Duterte faced four impeachment cases in total, with the three being filed all in December but were not referred to the Speaker’s office nor included in the order of business.  

She was officially impeached on 5 February after 215 lawmakers signed the fourth complaint. 

The number of votes was more than double the required 1/3 votes of the entire House, resulting in the prompt transmittal of the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial, bypassing committee hearings.  

The SC ruled, however, that the House’s expediting the fourth complaint robbed 

Duterte of her rights to be heard first before she is put on trial. The decision also states that when the 19th Congress ended without the House acting on the first three complaints, those complaints were “effectively terminated and dismissed,” and the one-year bar was reckoned.

The House, however, argued that the one-year bar was “never circumvented” because the initiation was triggered only when the fourth complaint exceeded the required threshold—a prerequisite in the impeachment process.

The chamber explained that “session days” refer strictly to days when legislative business is carried out, but the SC countered that the term includes any calendar day the House holds sessions.

Sotto lamented that the SC gravely erred in interpreting the impeachment rules, thereby opening the process to more abuse, with baseless complaints filed to trigger the one-year bar.

“Otherwise, you can't impeach anyone. Because what anyone would do is file a pointless impeachment, trash, and definitely nothing will happen. They can't entertain the second or third impeachment because of this,” Sotto stressed. 

“So, how can people not think that they might have another agenda other than just really deciding on whether that particular impeachment is constitutional?” he pointed out.

Sotto called into question the unanimous nature of the SC ruling, with no one even releasing a dissening opinion.

Sotto’s close ally, Senate President Pro Tempore, however, did not share the same view. He said all matters, regardless of whether they're an impeachment case against the VP—a staunch critic of the admin—that have already been decided by the high court “must be accepted and respected.”

"Agree or disagree, right or wrong, just or unjust, faultless or defective—we must accept and respect the SC ruling on the unconstitutionality of VP Sara Duterte’s impeachment case. They are not called the 'gods of Padre Faura' for nothing," he said.

Lacson posits that as the “final arbiter,” Congress can expect “no interpretation of the law other than the Supreme Court.”

The SC’s controversial SC verdict has triggered concerns across all sectors, with pro-impeachment lawmakers and ex-SC associate justice Adolfo Azcuna accusing the high court of overstepping Congress by imposing a new set of rules on how an impeachment case should be initiated—a prerogative exclusively reserved to the House. 

Azcuna, a member of the Constitutional Commission that crafted the 1987 Constitution, had argued that the SC’s judicial role is only to interpret provisions of the charter that are already specified in the rules, including those governing impeachment. 

However, he said it inadvertently introduced multiple requirements, including that the impeachment complaint be properly circulated among lawmakers before they affix their signatures, a requirement not explicitly enshrined in the Constitution.