Checks and imbalances

Impeachment straddles a curious line: it is politics, but it is also political law. In Vice President Sara Duterte v. House of Representatives, that line may have been erased entirely.

The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling voiding the impeachment complaint against the Vice President—on the ground that even archived, unacted-upon complaints count as “initiated proceedings” under the one-year bar—was more than procedural. It short-circuited the constitutional design. The House accuses; the Senate decides. But the Court has inserted itself between plug and socket—claiming not just the power to review outcomes, but to pull the plug altogether.

Impeachment is a civic reckoning, not just a legal proceeding. In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton called it “political” not because it is partisan, but because it addresses “injuries done immediately to the society itself.” So it made sense, he argued, that the power to try was entrusted to senators elected at large—not to judges—because it demands political judgment, not judicial detachment. It is, to borrow from legal scholar Cass Sunstein, “we the people,” through our representatives, holding power to account.

But in VP Duterte v. House, that reckoning was denied before it could begin. “It is not our duty to favor any political result,” wrote Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen. But preempting a constitutional process transforms law from a guide into a shield, protecting power rather than checking it.

By revising the decades-old Francisco v. House to count even a dust-gathering complaint—never referred to the Justice Committee—as enough to trigger the one-year bar, the court handed political operators a new playbook: file first, frustrate later. Impeachment, once a vehicle for truth, is now a race to the docket.

And the implications go further. By imposing heightened procedural standards retroactively, the court risks unraveling the past and constraining the future. Under this logic, even the 2012 impeachment of then Chief Justice Renato Corona—rushed, irregular, and without strict adherence to internal House rules—might now be void for lack of jurisdiction.

These new conditions are cast as a due process imperative—but isn’t that what the Senate trial is for? Ironically, the same court ruled just four years ago in Re: Letter of Cristina Roco Corona that an “official facing impeachment does not stand to lose fundamental constitutional rights such as life, liberty or property.” That ruling, now eclipsed, seems almost prophetic.

Timing matters, too. The ruling came just as Congress was poised to act. Retired senior associate justice Antonio Carpio noted that key facts and timelines were misappreciated—issues that full briefing and oral arguments, as retired Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban urged, might have clarified. That the court declined to do so gives new weight to the ponencia’s closing line: Was this not the wrong way to do the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time?

Which leads to a harder question. When a decision insulates not just one official but an entire administration, including the court itself, from extraordinary public scrutiny, does it still reflect the “rule of just law”—or is it just the law of rulers?

In Nixon v. United States (1993), the United States Supreme Court unanimously held that courts lack jurisdiction to intervene in impeachment proceedings. These are political remedies, not judicial ones. Our Constitution, of course, grants broader judicial review under the “grave abuse” standard. But that was never meant to swap the town hall for the high bench.

That’s why restraint must define the court’s role. As Yale law professor Keith Whittington warns in “The Impeachment Power,” stability lies in leaving impeachment to its “constitutional court” with “hard-to-reach” two-thirds vote, not the “whims” of “Supreme Court justices.” The greater danger is not politicized law, but the judicialization of politics—what Hannah Arendt described as political suppression masked in neutrality, when justice no longer roars but quietly retreats.

The Constitution does not demand prosecutorial rigor. It warrants the structures for political accountability. Impeachment is one such guarantee.

By ruling the complaint void from the start, the court effectively ensured no facts would be tested, no evidence weighed, no Mary Grace Piattos in public ledgers questioned. The tragedy is not that we will never convict. It is that we may never know.

Still, we must abide. Not because we agree—but because the court is worth more than its worst days.

—————

Noel B. Lazaro served on the defense team of retired chief justice Renato Corona and studied civil and criminal procedure under then professor Marvic Leonen at the University of the Philippines College of Law. He teaches remedial law in various law schools.