THE petition for certiorari and prohibition filed by lawyers Hue Jyro Go, Micah Lorelle de Guzman, Jake Leoncini and their co-petitioners, presents itself as a defense of constitutional order. It invokes the language of limits, restraint and due process, and calls on the Supreme Court to intervene in the ongoing impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives. On its face, this appears principled. But beneath the surface, the petition advances a far more consequential and dangerous argument. It seeks to transform impeachment into a judicial proceeding, governed by courtroom rules and subject to preemptive judicial control.
This is not a minor doctrinal shift. It is a fundamental reconfiguration of constitutional design.
The 1987 Constitution is explicit. The House of Representatives has the exclusive power to initiate all cases of impeachment, while the Senate has the sole power to try and decide them. This bifurcated structure is deliberate. It reflects an understanding that impeachment is not merely a legal exercise but a political mechanism of accountability, one that allows elected representatives to determine whether a public official should be called to answer before the Senate. The courts, by design, are not meant to supervise this process at every turn, and their role is limited to exceptional cases of grave abuse of discretion.
The petition attempts to collapse this distinction by reframing procedural choices of the House Committee on Justice as constitutional violations. It questions how complaints were evaluated, how subpoenas were issued and how evidence was developed, arguing that these acts exceed constitutional limits. It characterizes subpoenas for financial records, statements of assets and liabilities, and related documents as “fishing expeditions,” implying that Congress must first establish a precise factual basis before it can compel disclosure. It also invokes standards of fair play, pointing to statements by legislators and the pace of proceedings as signs of bias and prejudgment.
But this argument rests on a flawed premise.
Impeachment is not litigation. It does not begin with a fully developed evidentiary record, nor does it require that allegations be conclusively proven before inquiry can proceed. The House’s role is precisely to determine whether sufficient grounds exist, and that function necessarily involves investigation. Subpoenas are not an abuse of power but an essential tool for uncovering facts. To declare them unconstitutional unless supported by airtight evidence is to invert the logic of accountability by demanding proof before investigation and certainty before inquiry.
If this standard were adopted, impeachment would become unworkable. Public officials could evade scrutiny by simply withholding information, secure in the knowledge that Congress would be unable to compel disclosure without first satisfying an impossible evidentiary threshold. The process would be reduced to a paper exercise, where allegations cannot be tested because the means to test them are denied. That is not a safeguard against abuse but a shield against accountability.
The petition also advances a rigid interpretation of what it means to “initiate” impeachment under Article XI, suggesting that multiple complaints within a given period violate the one-year bar. This reading is overly formalistic and detached from legislative practice. Impeachment is not a single event triggered by one document. It is a process that may involve consolidation, amendment and supplementation as new information emerges.
Equally problematic is the petition’s invocation of due process at this stage. It points to statements by legislators and argues that these undermine fairness. But this conflates the roles of the House and the Senate. The House does not function as a neutral adjudicator; it operates more like a prosecutor, determining whether there is sufficient basis to accuse. The trial, where full due process protections apply, takes place in the Senate. To demand judicial neutrality from the House is to misunderstand the constitutional structure. Political judgment inevitably involves positions and rhetoric, and these do not automatically amount to constitutional violations.
The most far-reaching aspect of the petition lies in the relief it seeks. It asks the Supreme Court to issue a temporary restraining order, nullify the actions of the House and prohibit further proceedings. This is not merely a request for clarification but an invitation for the court to halt an ongoing impeachment process and assert supervisory authority over it.
If granted, this would create a precedent with profound implications. Every future impeachment could be subject to immediate judicial challenge, with respondents seeking to enjoin proceedings at the earliest stage. The courts would effectively become gatekeepers, determining whether Congress can even begin to exercise its constitutional power. This would blur the separation of powers and weaken the autonomy of the legislative branch in one of its most critical functions.
It is important to recall that the standard for judicial intervention is not whether the House has acted perfectly, or even whether it has made questionable decisions. The threshold is grave abuse of discretion, defined as conduct so arbitrary and capricious as to amount to a lack or excess of jurisdiction. Even by the petition’s own account, the House has received complaints, conducted hearings, issued subpoenas and given the respondent the opportunity to answer. These are not indicators of a body acting without jurisdiction, but of a process unfolding within constitutional bounds, however imperfect.
Impeachment is not designed to be insulated from politics. It is an expression of it. The Constitution acknowledges this reality and channels it through institutional design, relying on the interplay between the House, the Senate and ultimately the electorate to check abuses. Judicial intervention is reserved for the most egregious violations, not for disagreements over procedure or pace.
What the petition ultimately seeks is to replace this political process with a quasi-judicial one, binding Congress to courtroom standards and subjecting its actions to immediate judicial review. While this may appear to uphold the rule of law, it risks weakening a central mechanism of accountability. Once impeachment is judicialized, it becomes vulnerable to delay, technical obstruction and strategic litigation designed to derail it.
The Constitution did not design impeachment to be easy. But neither did it design it to be impossible. That is the danger this petition creates.
The author is a professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and vice chairman of the board of state-run PTVNI.
