Last of two parts
IT is of the essence of judicial duty to construe statutes so as to avoid such a deplorable result. That has long been a judicial function. A literal reading of a legislative act which could be thus characterized is to be avoided if the language thereof can be given a reasonable application consistent with the legislative purpose. In the apt language of Frankfurter: "A decent respect for the policy of Congress must save us from imputing to it a self-defeating, if not disingenuous purpose. Certainly, we must reject a construction that at best amounts to a manifestation of verbal ingenuity but hardly satisfies the test of rationality on which law must be based."
From a plethora of pronouncements on the same subject, it will do to cite Secretary of Justice v. Koruga, G.R. 166199 (April 24, 2009) where the Court held that a literal interpretation would be abandoned when the result of such interpretation would be an absurdity.
"The general rule in construing words and phrases used in a statute is that in the absence of legislative intent to the contrary, they should be given their plain, ordinary and common usage meaning. However, a literal interpretation of a statute is to be rejected if it will operate unjustly, lead to absurd results, or contract the evident meaning of the statute taken as a whole. After all, statutes should receive a sensible construction, such as will give effect to the legislative intention and so as to avoid an unjust or an absurd conclusion. Indeed, courts are not to give words meanings that would lead to absurd or unreasonable consequences."
The absurdity of insisting on a fixed number to interpret “two-thirds of all its Members” is not too difficult to discern.
First: If ex hypothesi, nine senators were to resign, or — heaven forbid — to perish in a plane crash or a natural disaster, or otherwise incapacitated, it would then follow, were 16 a fixed number that nobody could be convicted in an impeachment trial, no matter the preponderant evidence against the respondent public officer.
Second: Inasmuch as the Constitution vests in the Senate the “sole power to try,” it pays to heed what jurisprudence has repeatedly maintained are the requisites of a trial. People of the Philippines v. Court of Appeals, G.R. 118882 (Sept. 26, 1996) summarizes the kernel of due process relative to the judge.
"One of the essential requirements of procedural due process in a judicial proceeding is that there must be an impartial court or tribunal clothed with judicial power to hear and determine the matter before it. Thus, every litigant, including the State, is entitled to the cold neutrality of an impartial judge which was explained in Javier v. Commission on Elections (144 SCRA 194 [1986]), in the following words:
This Court has repeatedly and consistently demanded "the cold neutrality of an impartial judge" as the indispensable imperative of due process. To bolster that requirement, we have held that the judge must not only be impartial but must also appear to be impartial as an added assurance to the parties that his decision will be just. The litigants are entitled to no less than that. They should be sure that when their rights are violated they can go to a judge who shall give them justice. They must trust the judge, otherwise they will not go to him at all. They must believe in his sense of fairness, otherwise they will not seek his judgment. Without such confidence, there would be no point in invoking his action for the justice they expect.
Due process is intended to ensure that confidence by requiring compliance with what Justice Frankfurter calls the rudiments of fair play. Fair play calls for equal justice. There cannot be equal justice where a suitor approaches a court already committed to the other party and with a judgment already made and waiting only to be formalized after the litigants shall have undergone the charade of a formal hearing. Judicial (and also extrajudicial) proceedings are not orchestrated plays in which the parties are supposed to make the motions and reach the denouement according to a prepared script. There is no writer to foreordain the ending. The judge will reach his conclusions only after all the evidence is in and all the arguments are filed, on the basis of the established facts and the pertinent law." (Emphasis supplied.)
If 16 were a fixed number, then the three absent senators — Bato de la Rosa, Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Mercoleta and lately Ms Loren Legarda and the Cayetano siblings — would be allowed to participate in a judgment in proceedings of which they were never or only partly present. In fact, given the present patent sympathies displayed by some senators, the whole exercise of a Senate trial would indeed be a charade because the 16 votes necessary to convict would patently be an unattainable number.
More importantly, if 16 were a fixed number for conviction, then every absent member would, in effect, be casting a vote of acquittal — and this would be the height not only of absurdity but of unfairness.
In the Federalist Papers, No. 65, when Alexander Hamilton proposed the notion of impeachment in the US Constitution — from whence came the Philippine provisions on impeachment — Hamilton wrote:
"What, it may be asked, is the true spirit of the institution itself? Is it not designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men? If this be the design of it, who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves? It is not disputed that the power of originating the inquiry, or, in other words, of preferring the impeachment, ought to be lodged in the hands of one branch of the legislative body. Will not the reasons which indicate the propriety of this arrangement strongly plead for an admission of the other branch of that body to a share of the inquiry? The model from which the idea of this institution has been borrowed, pointed out that course to the convention. In Great Britain it is the province of the House of Commons to prefer the impeachment, and of the House of Lords to decide upon it. Several of the State constitutions have followed the example. As well the latter, as the former, seem to have regarded the practice of impeachments as a bridle in the hands of the legislative body upon the executive servants of the government. Is not this the true light in which it ought to be regarded?
Where else than in the Senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? What other body would be likely to feel confidence enough in its own situation, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the representatives of the people, his accusers?”
“Impartiality between individual accused and the representatives of the people, his accusers” — and there can be impartiality only when a judge is present. There can be no impartiality before an absent judge, because, very plainly, an absent judge is not a judge!
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph