SC, Senate impeachment court equals, says Fr. Bernas
Neither the Supreme Court nor the Senate impeachment court is superior over the other; the Constitution is.
Fr. Joaquin Bernas, a constitutionalist and opinion columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, made this observation on Wednesday night amid debates on whether the proceedings of the impeachment court may be stopped by the Supreme Court in response to a petition from Chief Justice Renato Corona.
“[S]aying that the Senate as impeachment court is superior to the Supreme Court [places] the two bodies on a collision course. When irresistible forces move … someone has got to give,” Bernas said in a keynote address during the oathtaking of new officers of the Philippine Constitutional Association led by its president, House Minority Floor Leader and Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.
The prosecution and the defense, senator-judges and certain legal experts have been debating on whether the Supreme Court can interfere in the ongoing impeachment trial.
Bernas said the Senate acting as an impeachment body did not necessarily change its nature.
“The contention that the Senate as impeachment court is not equal with the other departments but even superior to them in matters involving impeachment seems to assume that the Senate as impeachment court is different from the Senate as legislative body,” Bernas said.
Powers
The powers exercised by the Senate during an impeachment are powers given to it, “but to be exercised only on occasion,” he pointed out, adding:
“There is only one Senate which occasionally acts as impeachment court; in the same manner, there is only one Supreme Court which occasionally acts as Presidential Electoral Tribunal. The Senate, whether acting as impeachment court or legislative body, is the same Senate that is coequal and not superior to the other department.”
“[O]nly the Constitution is superior … Does the fact that the Constitution [identifies] the Senate as the sole judge of all impeachment cases make it superior to the Supreme Court in everything relating to impeachment? Perhaps we can find an answer to this by [studying] the jurisprudence on the relation of the Supreme Court to other agencies of the government,” he said.
Bernas added that even if the Constitution states that the electoral tribunals shall be the sole judge of all election contests, the high court came in to determine whether there had been grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of the electoral tribunals.
Meaning of the law
“What all these mean is that the Supreme Court can come in when needed to determine the meaning of the law,” Bernas said.
He said this did not mean the high court’s superiority over the other departments, only that “the Constitution has placed in the Supreme Court the power to determine with finality the meaning of the law.”
“It means the superiority of the Constitution, and it just so happens that in the constitutional structure of our government, there is a separation of responsibilities. There is no superiority of one over the others. There is only superiority of the Constitution over all.”
Asked to comment on the Chief Justice’s petition to the Supreme Court to stop his impeachment trial, President Benigno Aquino III said he could not see the reason behind it.
“[In] the Constitution—they might say that they are lawyers and I’m not—the English words ‘sole’ and ’exclusively’ are clear … in referring to the power of the House to impeach and referring to the Senate’s right to try,” Mr. Aquino said in Dumaguete City on Wednesday afternoon.
“So I don’t get the legal theory that all of a sudden the Supreme Court can involve itself in the impeachment process when the Constitution that we all swore to defend says that one part of the impeachment belongs exclusively to the House and the other to the Senate,” he said.
