‘Right to be forgotten‘ should be part of lectures – SC candidate

Exercising the “right to be forgotten” should be addressed as an interesting field in Remedial Law, Court of Appeals Associate Justice Eduardo B. Peralta Jr. told members of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC).

Peralta said seminars to be attended by the judges and lawyers should be “tweaked.”

One point of focus he mentioned was the problem on privacy and the application of the “right to be forgotten.”

The “right to be forgotten” became popular because of the 2014 case about the removal of articles published online by La Vanguardia (Google v. Costeja Gonzáles), which was allowed by a court in Europe.

In the Philippines, such right may have been included in the Data Protection Act, which provides for the right to suspension and blocking, allowing data subjects to order the blocking, removal or destruction of his or her personal information from a personal information controller’s filing system subject to limitations.

“There are two cases that was not yet tackled by the MCLE [Mandatory Continuing Legal Education] providers,” Peralta told JBC members when asked about an item of the MCLE that should looked into and modified. “I think this should be addressed as an interesting field in Remedial Law in the light of the constitutional provision on unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Peralta is one of the 20 applicants vying for the Supreme Court post that will become vacant upon the retirement of Associate Justie Noel Tijam.

He is the only applicant with a Doctor of Civil Law degree.

Peralta started his career in the judiciary in 1989 as a staff member in the office of then Court of Appeals Associate Justice Jose Melo.

He then served as Manila Metropolitan Trial Court judge starting in 1995 until he was promoted as Manila Regional Trial Court judge. /atm