JBC deliberates on 2 SC vacancies

MANILA, Philippines -  Five Court of Appeals (CA) justices and a 68-year-old outsider have been nominated for two vacancies in the Supreme Court (SC) following the retirement of Associate Justices Antonio Eduardo Nachura and Conchita Carpio-Morales.

Seven of eight members of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) chaired by Chief Justice Renato Corona picked CA Justice Jose Reyes Jr. and lawyer Rodolfo Robles as their top choices during deliberations yesterday.

Reyes, who has been in the judiciary for 33 years, penned the CA ruling in January last year that upheld the revocation of the license of a Board of Nursing member and an examiner for the leakage in the June 2006 nursing licensure examination.

Robles, on the other hand, is a perennial applicant to the SC.

He was topnotcher in the 1967 Bar examinations and president of real estate company Landphil Corp.

CA Justices Bienvenido Reyes and Magdangal de Leon came in second with six votes each, while Justices Estela Perlas- Bernabe and Japar Dimaampao were third with five votes each.

The names of the six final nominees were included in a shortlist expected to be submitted to President Aquino today.

The JBC picked them from a total of 33 applicants and nominees to replace Nachura and Carpio-Morales, who retired last June 13 and 19.

Upon receipt of the shortlist, Aquino is required by law to name the two new SC justices within 90 days from the date of the vacancies.

Aquino’s first SC appointment last year was Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno.

Under the Constitution, an SC associate justice could be appointed if he or she is a natural born citizen, at least 40 years old, and must have been for 15 years or more a judge of a lower court or engaged in the practice of law in the Philippines.

An additional and less precise constitutional requirement, however, provides that the appointee “must be a person of proven competence, integrity, probity, and independence.”