BY AMADO P. MACASAET
MALAYA
‘Presiding Officer Enrile and Senator-Judge Defensor-Santiago cavalierly dismissed the Nixon case as one that applies only as a precedent In the US.’
OUR piece on the sanctity of the impeachment court and how it is beyond the pale of judicial authority merited the following comment from a lawyer who said his name is not as important as this thoughts on the subject:
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An impeachment proceeding is a remedy for offenses against the people and entirely results from removal of impeachable officers from their positions for violating the mandate that public office is a public trust. In fact, in his separate opinion in Francisco Jr. vs. House of Representatives, 415 SCRA 44 (2003), involving the impeachment proceedings against then Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., then Associate Justice Renato Corona wrote in his own words:
“Incorporated in the 1987 Constitution are devices meant to prevent abuse by the three branches of government. One Is the House of Representatives’ exclusive power of impeachment for the removal of impeachable officers from their positions for violating the mandate that public office is a public trust.
Impeachment under the Philippine Constitution, as a remedy for serious political offenses against the people, runs parallel to that of the U.S. Constitution whose framers regarded it as a political weapon against executive tyranny. It was meant to fend against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate.
Even if an impeachable official enjoys immunity, he can still be removed in extreme cases to protect the public.”
Thus, Article XI is the exception to the general grant of power to the SC under Article VIII. The exception is manifest in the grant of the sole power to the Impeachment Court to try and decide all impeachment cases. The grant of sole power is clear and unqualified. Thus, the SC may not interfere in any aspect of the impeachment case.
Further, the ruling by the US Supreme Court in Nixon vs. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993), is persuasive considering that the provisions of the US Constitution on impeachment are practically the same as the provisions of our Constitution on impeachment.
Section 3(6), Article I of the US Constitution provides:
“The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.
When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the Members present”
Thus, in Nixon vs. United States, the US Supreme Court held that the power to try and decide cases of impeachment belongs only to the Senate. In interpreting the phrase “sole power”, the US Supreme Court said:
‘We think that the word ‘sole’ is of considerable significance.
Indeed, the word ‘sole’ appears only one other time in the Constitution-with respect to the House of Representatives’ Power of Impeachment.” Art. I. Sec. 2, cl. 5 . The common sense meaning of the word ‘sole’ is that the Senate alone shall have authority to determine whether an individual
should be acquitted or convicted. The dictionary definition bears this out. ‘Sole’ is defined as ‘having no companion,’ ‘solitary,’ ‘being the only one,’ and ‘functioning… independently and without assistance or interference.’.
If the courts may review the actions of the Senate in order to determine whether that body ‘tried’ an impeached official. It is difficult to see how the Senate would be ‘functioning …
independently and without assistance or interference …
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“There are two additional reasons why the Judiciary. and the Supreme Court in particular, were not chosen to have any role in impeachments. First, the framers recognized that most likely there would be two sets of proceedings for individuals who commit impeachable offenses–the impeachment trial and a separate
criminal trial. In fact, the Constitution explicitly provides for two separate proceedings.
The Framers deliberately separated the two forums to avoid raising the specter of bias and to ensure independent judgments:
‘Would it be proper that the persons, who had disposed of his fame and his most valuable rights as a citizen in one trial, should in another trial, for the same offence, be also the disposers of his life and his fortune?
Would there not be the greatest reason to apprehend, that error in the first sentence would be the parent of error in the second sentence? That the strong bias of one decision would be apt to overrule the influence of any new lights, which might be brought to vary the complexion of another decision?.
Certainly judicial review of the Senate’s “trial” would introduce the same risk of bias as would participation in the trial itself.
Second, Judicial review would be inconsistent with the framers’ insistence that our system be one of checks and balances. In our constitutional system, impeachment was designed to be the only check o n the Judicial Branch by the Legislature. On the topic of judicial accountability, Hamilton wrote:
‘The precautions for their responsibility are comprised in the article respecting impeachments. They are liable to be impeached for mal conduct by the House of Representatives, and tried by the Senate, and if convicted, may be dismissed from office and disqualified for holding any other.
This is the only provision on the point, which is consistent with the necessary independence of the judicial character, ‘and is the only one which we find in our own constitution in respect to our own judges.
Judicial involvement in impeachment proceedings, even if only for purposes of Judicial review, is counterintuitive because it would eviscerate the important constitutional check” placed on the Judiciary by the Framers.
Nixon’s argument would place final reviewing authority with respect to impeachments in the hands of the same body that the impeachment process is meant to regulate.
Nevertheless, Nixon argues that judicial review is necessary in order to place a check on the Legislature. Nixon fears that if the Senate is given unreviewable authority to interpret the Impeachment Trial Clause, there is a grave risk that the Senate will usurp judicial power. The Framers anticipated this objection and created two constitutional safeguards to keep the Senate in check. The first safeguard is that the whole of the impeachment power is divided between the two legislative bodies, with the House given the right to accuse and the
Senate given the right to judge.
This split of authority avoids the inconvenience of making the same persons both accusers and judges; and guards against the danger of persecution from the prevalency of a factious spirit in either of those
branches. The second safeguard is the two-thirds supermajority vote requirement. Hamilton explained that “[a]s the concurrence of two-thirds of the senate will be requisite to a condemnation, the security to innocence, from this additional circumstance, will be as complete as itself can desire.’
Presiding Officer Enrile and Senator-Judge Defensor-Santiago cavalierly dismissed the Nixon case as one that applies only as a precedent In the US.
However, what they failed to acknowledge is that the system of impeachment under our Constitution is drawn from the impeachment system provided under the US Constitution upon which the Nixon case was decided. Clearly, the Nixon case is instructive, at the least, on how the impeachment process is to be conducted.
In sum, interference by the SC in the impeachment trial violates and totally disregards the system of checks and balances under the Constitution and the constitutional provisions on accountability of public officers.
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