Who judges the judges?

Who judges the judges? | Daily Tribune

A fundamental issue was raised recently by a retired senior member of the Supreme Court (SC) about what he claimed were errors in the court’s recent decision junking the impeachment process against Vice President Sara Duterte.

The question centers on the term “session days,” which determines the timing of the process.

The term became a key issue because the Constitution explicitly conditions the start of impeachment on placing a complaint in the Order of Business within a certain number of days.

The SC held that the House failed to meet that requirement, thereby invalidating the impeachment process until the one-year bar expires.

Under the 1987 Constitution, when an impeachment complaint is filed and endorsed, the House of Representatives must place it in the Order of Business within 10 session days of its endorsement.

A session day occurs when the House of Representatives is in session, but in the press brief accompanying the Court’s latest ruling, the Supreme Court clarified that, for purposes of VP Sara’s impeachment provision, “session days… mean calendar days in which the House of Representatives holds a session.”

In its 25 July 2025 decision, which was reaffirmed when the House’s motion for reconsideration was denied, the Supreme Court held that the first three impeachment complaints weren’t placed in the Order of Business within the required session days after endorsement.

Because of that, and the “one-year bar” rule, which forbids filing a new impeachment against the same official within one year of its initiation, the later impeachment complaint that led to the Articles of Impeachment sent to the Senate was held to be barred and unconstitutional.

The session-days question was crucial because it concerned whether the House respected the Constitution’s timing for initiating impeachment. The Court treated this as a constitutional issue, not merely an internal House procedure, because it affected the validity of the process.

Retired Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio cited jurisprudence holding that, in interpreting the Constitution, words and phrases must be given their ordinary meaning unless technical terms are used.

Thus, a session day is a technical term because it has a definite meaning that evolved. Now, the Supreme Court has said that a session day is a calendar day on which sessions are held.

“There was never a decision before saying that a session day means a calendar day where there are sessions. A session day has a specific meaning: to stop the clock.

“If you say a session day is a calendar day where there are sessions, you’re not stopping the clock. You will still breach their deadline,” according to Carpio.

“I consider it an error, a fundamental error, because it violates previous decisions of the Supreme Court. And it is also not consistent with the concept of session days. The purpose of session days is to stop the clock,” the magistrate explained.

Another error in the decision, according to Carpio, was that since the 10 days were breached, the impeachment complaint was deemed initiated.

Initiation is when it is referred to the Committee on Justice, but at the same time, the Tribunal’s resolution said it was dismissed for violating the 10th session day rule.

The two concepts of initiation and dismissal, Carpio conceded, are totally incompatible. The Supreme Court merged two totally incompatible concepts into a single idea.

Thus, the inescapable question is how such judicial errors of the High Court can be remedied.

Carpio said the correction can only be rendered through a change in the Constitution, or to wait for the next impeachment challenge and ask the Court to revisit the issue.

The impeachment friction has twists and turns that threaten an upheaval in every branch of the government, including the judiciary.