[Just Saying] Judicial statesmanship in an era of expanded jurisdiction

Supreme Court justices are the institutional magistrates of our laws, but they are not the exclusive owners of the people’s justice. 

Under the expanded jurisdiction granted by the 1987 Constitution, the Court has the power to determine whether there has been “grave abuse of discretion” on the part of any branch or instrumentality of the government. 

Grave abuse of discretion is not just a simple error of judgment. The Supreme Court defines it as “a whimsical and capricious exercise of power so patent and gross as to amount to an evasion of a positive duty or a virtual refusal to perform a duty enjoined by law.” 

However, this expanded power has become a magnet for creative lawyering. It takes a great deal of ingenuity to dress up a political defeat, a procedural error, a policy disagreement or even a faithful observance of enunciated rules as grave abuse of discretion. We see petitions that are semantically attractive, flowing with eloquent prose, decisional quotations and other legalese, and yet, distilled into their very essence, they ask the Supreme Court to do one thing: overrule the wisdom of a co-equal branch.

Nowhere is this tension more palpable than in the realm of impeachment. The Constitution is explicit: the House of Representatives shall have the sole power to initiate all cases of impeachment and provide its rules. This is what we call a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment. It is an obligation bestowed upon the people’s representatives, not the magistrates.

When the Supreme Court is lured into intervening in these proceedings, invoking “grave abuse,” it treads on dangerous ground. The tribunal may become an overseer not a court of law. In doing so, it does not exert its authority — it demeans it. By descending into the political arena to manage the House’s sole functions, the Court devalues its own integrity. 

In any meddling, the Supreme Court trades its long-term moral capital for short-term political intervention, deeply annoying to the citizenry that expects the Court to remain above the fray.

Furthermore, when the Supreme Court consistently entertains petitions challenging the internal mechanics of impeachment, it risks appearing as a strategic “team-mate” for those under fire. This predilection for involvement transforms the Bench from an arbiter to a manager and finally  into a defensive vanguard, a shift that does not merely manage the process but actively deforms it.

Ultimately, such a perception is corrosive; it suggests that the Supreme Court is being used or, worse, allowing itself to be used not as a shield for the law, but as a political ally, a transformation that deeply denigrates the Supreme Court’s moral authority and mocks the  independence the magistrates are sworn to uphold. And because justice starts with perception, sharp cris de coeur may be heard from various sectors.

There is a seductive, stoic quality to the legal maxim fiat justitia ruat caelum — “let justice be done though the heavens fall.” It is the ultimate defense for a Court that wishes to ignore public outcry, framing its intervention as a courageous adherence to principle regardless of the political cost. 

However, this posture dangerously ignores the fact that in a democracy, reputation is the bedrock of legitimacy. The Supreme Court possesses only the moral authority granted by the people’s trust. When the Court brushes aside criticism as mere political noise, it risks retreating into an ivory tower that is increasingly detached from the constitutional reality on the ground.

While it is true that fundamental due process must never be sacrificed at the altar of popularity, a distinction must be made between a blatant disregard of rights and the mere procedural dissatisfaction of a high-ranking official. If the House is operating within the broad strokes of the law and the latest Supreme Court decisions, the balance must tilt toward the representatives of the people.

Unfortunately, as the saying goes: the Court is final not because it is infallible; it is considered “infallible” only because it is final. When, because of perceived judicial arrogance, magistrates  are seen as the “Gods of Padre Faura,” that is irreverently despicable. And disturbingly, this is exacerbated when the Court itself deliberately enunciates en banc that the justices, as a collective group, cannot be impeached on the basis of the exercise of their decisional prerogatives. 

Unsettlingly to others, sometimes, the perception — rightly or wrongly — is that the Supreme Court fails to detect or, worse, deliberately entertains semantically attractive but intrusive petitions and, in the process, condescendingly chips away the integrity of a constitutionally co-equal body, the Congress. And not a few even think that some justices may be so engrossed in their own sanctimoniousness, incapacitating them to discern their fundamental errors.

This is where judicial statesmanship must come in. It is the wisdom of self-restraint in the grand design of a democracy. The Court must meaningfully recognize that not every act is a grave abuse.

To preserve the respectability of the judiciary and re-enforce the acceptability of its decisions, the Court must strongly affirm the “textual commitment” of the House, not out of weakness, but out of a profound observance of the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution. 

True constitutional power is not found in the Supreme Court’s intervening in everything, but in the wisdom to know when it must rebuke a so-called grave-abuse-petition so that the higher interest of democracy can speak. – Rappler.com