Column: What in the world was Justice Leonen thinking?

One possible conclusion: He wanted to virtually disable the second mode of impeachment. Published in Rappler on July 31, 2025.

As a writer, I was struck by the tone of much of the obiter dicta that Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen deployed, like IEDs in a war of attrition, in Duterte vs House of Representatives.

In his discussion of the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, for instance, he wrote: “When used properly, impeachment is a tool for accountability. When abused, it is a tool for political retribution.” And then, apropos of nothing at all, he added: “Impeachment is not a chance to settle political scores. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have the responsibility to treat the impeachment process with seriousness, not as a chance to go after personalities or political opponents, but as a constitutional tool to address specific acts of misconduct.” 

Unlike his legal arguments, this criticism of the political or outright partisan conduct of Congress comes out of the blue. Who said anything about score-settling? Nothing in the facts he scrupulously laid out throughout the ruling could be reasonably construed as proof of political retribution. 

But he wasn’t done. “Allegations like corruption demand careful, evidence-based scrutiny. This process was never meant to be a stage for political theater or personal attacks. It is about determining whether a public official has committed actions that truly rise to the level of impeachable offenses…. When the focus shifts to the person rather than the alleged wrongdoing, the process loses its integrity, and impeachment risks becoming a blunt political weapon instead of a safeguard for public accountability.”

He himself does not make the direct connection between weapon and procedure. But his words imply, in the same way that a ticking clock suggests the lethal presence of a bomb, that the House of Representatives, by choosing the second mode of impeachment (the one-third provision), had turned impeachment into a blunt political weapon.

Again, nothing in the facts as presented really supports this connection. Why even bring it up? Or does Justice Leonen think the mere recourse to the second mode already weaponizes impeachment?

Column: ‘I will destroy her in public’

Published on November 19, 2019.

Tomorrow, Sen. Leila de Lima will spend her 1,000th day in detention— for a charge that is “blatantly a pure invention,” driven by “motives [that] are not disguised.” The first quote is from the dissenting opinion of Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, the second from the dissent of Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, after a majority of eight justices of the Supreme Court ruled in October 2017 that De Lima’s prosecution on a drugs-related charge was not unconstitutional.

Carpio’s dissent called it straight: “This Court, the last bulwark of democracy and liberty in the land, should never countenance such a fake charge. To allow the continued detention of petitioner under this Information is one of the grossest injustices ever perpetrated in recent memory in full view of the Filipino nation and the entire world.”

Column: The Supreme Court commits suicide

Published on May 15, 2018.

When the complete history of this Supreme Court is written, the role of Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa as the clarion voice of conscience and clarity in the hardest cases will finally be given sharp relief. As I have learned in the Marcos burial case and in the martial-law-in-Mindanao decisions, Caguioa’s dissenting opinion is the right first read after the ponencia. His dissents — in brisk, bracing language — offer a comprehensive, point-by-point rebuttal (or perhaps the more precise term is evisceration) of the majority opinion; they are messages from an alternate universe, where justice prevails over power and reason over force.

He has done it again, in Republic v. Sereno. He begins with an unflinching look at the true stakes: “This quo warranto petition is brought before the Court purportedly to test the integrity of the Chief Justice. However, what it really tests is the integrity of the Court …. By ousting the Chief Justice through the expediency of holding that the Chief Justice failed this ‘test’ of integrity, it is actually the Court that fails.” (That one word, “expediency,” is telling.)