Bastion of the old, grey, and elite?

Our latest two-part report looks at the work of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) in the first 20 years of its existence from 1988 to 2008, as well as the lack of transparency in its screening of nominees to the judiciary.

The 1987 Constitution purposely created the JBC to “depoliticize” and to open up the selection and appointment of justices and judges.

But a fresh scholarly report on the JBC shows that after 35 screening processes, the JBC’s harvest of 80 nominees and the resulting 41 appointments to the Supreme Court made by four Philippine presidents since 1988 point to worrisome trends.

Among other things, the study co-authored by spouses Dante B. Gatmaytan, associate professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law, and Cielo Magno, Fulbright fellow at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, found that:

The Supreme Court has remained an impregnable enclave of justices who are mostly old, mostly male, and mostly born and bred in imperious Luzon.

Their average age when appointed was 63 years, or just seven years shy of the mandatory retirement age of 70 years under Philippine law, making for a fast turnover rate of magistrates at the high tribunal.

Two in every three were jurists and bureaucrats in their previous lives, and thus, also mostly creatures of habit and routine.

The elite law schools are still the favored picking ground for justices, with 20 of the 41 appointees coming from the University of the Philippines, and five each from the Ateneo de Manila University and San Beda College. The 11 other appointees were from other law schools also located in the capital region.

In the last 20 years, while 15 of the 80 nominees were female, only three women were eventually appointed.