Judging Lino
Judges rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should totally be indifferent to pressures of (the) times. — US Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger
This quote was the opening statement of the foreword of Chief Justice Reynato Puno in the book Decisions of Justice Lino M. Patajo.
Last September 23, two sisters, Lorna Patajo-Kapunan and Preachy Patajo-Legasto, and their two brothers, Domingo and Jose, paid tribute to their dear father who celebrated his 92nd birthday. They lovingly compiled, edited, published and launched Decisions of Justice Lino M. Patajo, his legacy to jurisprudence. It documents his judgments, handed down in landmark cases, some of which set precedents, or clarified and interpreted the Constitution.
Chief Justice Puno observed that “Though Justice Patajo served in the High Court for barely a year, his ponencias are all splendidly thorough and reasonable, with the rule of law embedded in every sentence and stamped upon every argument.” As CJ Puno narrates, Patajo was detoured to the Court of Appeals as a form of punishment. “Given his enormous legal talent, he should have been elevated to the highest court of the land at a much earlier time. He was denied this honor for the simple reason that he did not bow to the powers that be, especially in his stint as Commissioner of the Commission on Elections (1969-1973), where he was the voice of dissent often exposing its decisions that compromised the sovereign will of the people.” Justice Patajo spent six years in the Court of Appeals despite being over-qualified for the job. When he was finally promoted to the highest court of the land (1985-86), he only had eight months and 16 days left before retirement.
It might be relevant to point out that Patajo was a Comelec commissioner at the time martial law was imposed. He was a Justice of the Supreme Court when the Marcos regime finally collapsed in 1986. The sole dissenting voice in the Comelec during one of the darkest periods of our history was at the pinnacle of his career when the downfall of the usurper of power occurred. What poetic justice! More ironic was that Marcos was his classmate. Both belonged to the same illustrious class of 1939, which produced the most number of Justices for the Supreme Court.
Patajo was a dedicated public servant for six decades. He lived by the mantra “a public office is a public trust,” which is anathema to a tyrant as holy water is to a vampire. A bar topnotcher, acknowledged to be one of the “best and the brightest,” the country was denied his competence and brilliance because he was not a yes-man. So today, when we get goosebumps because we feel a degree of déjà vu, let us not lose hope. Karma catches up sooner than later to the betrayers of public trust and the yes-ma’ams.
Normally, reading lengthy, sometimes verbose decisions on cases is about as appealing as deciphering doctors’ prescriptions. The only readers who would go through this exercise willingly and thoroughly are lawyers, plaintiffs, defendants and possibly insomniacs who hope the prose will lull them to sleep. The same is true for the chicken-scratch handwriting on Rx pads. You’d only read them if your life literally depended on it. But in the “literary” world of jurisprudence, “Justice Patajo wrote his decisions based on downright unpretentious truths ... all remarkably absent of rhetoric and prose, illustrations of the fact that good decisions are made only of the truth,” praised CJ Puno. As further testament to the soundness and fairness of Patajo’s rulings, the Supreme Court never once reversed his decisions in Comelec or the Court of Appeals.
In an intimate gathering at the Centennial Hall of the Supreme Court, family and friends celebrated the patriarch’s unsullied career. In his keynote address CJ Puno paid the highest compliment to Justice Patajo: “More than his mastery of the law was his well known determination to make the law the master of the powerful and the refuge of the powerless.”
As a communication pro, I was moved by CJ Puno’s command of language and the accuracy and care with which he chooses words. How true that personal integrity and humility fortify credibility and enhance charisma. The Greek orators and philosophers distilled influence as the end product of three integral elements: ethos (who you are), logos (intelligence) and pathos (empathy). Modern-day presentation seminars echo these same factors and measure their significance. The power of a speech depends on what you’re saying (seven percent), how you’re saying it (37 percent) and who is saying it (56 percent). Of the three components, the speaker’s reputation for veracity is the most important. When government propaganda is received with cynicism or indifference, the source is most likely regarded as duplicitous.
As an avid student of leadership, I was grateful for the recent morsel of optimism. There are still a handful of leaders that we can believe in. The Supreme Court remains one of the more trusted and credible democratic institutions. Its final verdict on the insidious MOA-AD, killed and buried by a vote of 8-7, proved that good can still triumph over evil, even by the skin of its teeth. This mitigated the frustration of enlightened citizens over the decision to uphold executive privilege in the NBN-ZTE scandal. The divide between the independent thinkers and the yes-ma’ams has become more pronounced. The Filipino people are in suspense about how the balance will tilt, when the legality of the Con Ass for Cha-Cha rears its ugly head once again.
As someone who continues to hope for this country, it’s a rare treat to be with a few good men in the same room. We face the grim prospect of six justices retiring in 2009, and being replaced by less than the best and the brightest, just like in the Marcos era. By then, the Supreme Court would be practically 100-percent made up of appointees of this administration, just like in the Marcos era. And consequently, unless proven otherwise, another institution would become tainted and suspect, just like the Marcos era.
It is fitting therefore to join in the plea of American lawyer and orator Rufus Choate on how jurists should conduct themselves:
“He shall know nothing about the parties, everything about the case. He shall do everything for justice; nothing for himself; nothing for his friend; nothing for his patron; nothing for his sovereign. If on one side is the executive power, the legislature and the people — the sources of his honors, the givers of his daily bread — and on the other, an individual nameless and odious, his eye is to see neither, great nor small; attending only to the trepidations of the balance.”
Retired Justice Lino M. Patajo and soon-to-retire Chief Justice Reynato Puno deserve the grateful admiration of a nation so desperate for true servant leaders. They have raised the bar and set the example for those who will follow. Maybe it’s too much to expect parity in substance, but at least they must have the courage to assert the independence of the judiciary and the objectivity of the rule of law. For you will be judged.
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Agree or disagree at ms.comfeedback@gmail.com or mscom@campaignsandgrey.net. The author regrets having missed some of the readers’ reactions due to IT glitches.
