Summa cum laude
By Isagani Cruz

I have not yet read the decision in full but I am thrilled enough by the reports in the Inquirer of the essential rulings of the landmark case. The proclamation was roundly rejected as an open and blatant defiance of the paramount law as the guardian of the rights of the people in the democratic society. The Supreme Court has assured the nation, in language that cannot be misunderstood even by those who are none so blind as those who will not see that Proclamation No. 1017 was arrant tyranny.

The ponencia is a fitting reprimand for President Macapagal-Arroyo who, as the chief enforcer of the law, has been exposed to be its chief violator. The justices may not have said so directly out of respect for her exalted office, but their meaning was pungently clear. In issuing and enforcing the challenged proclamation, she had willfully violated the Bill of Rights and the nature of republican government. She had attempted but failed, thanks to a vigilant Supreme Court, to impose another dictatorship on this country.

I must confess - and I do so joyously now - that I had apprehensions about how the Supreme Court would decide the controversial case. Like many other citizens, I was worried that the justices, who had all but two been appointed by President Arroyo, might be moved by utang na loob in ruling for her and not against the proclamation. I thank God that I was mistaken. It swells the heart that a clear majority of the Court, following their knowledge of the law and the biddings of their conscience, voted to declare Proclamation No. 1017 unconstitutional.

Our history would not have been seriously blemished during the time of Ferdinand Marcos if the Supreme Court then had summoned the courage to stop him when he declared martial law in 1972 and started to impose eventual despotism with his avaricious arrogation of power (and public funds). This is second-guessing now, but I like to think that the dictator could have been stopped on his tracks if the spineless justices then had shown the courage exhibited by the members of the present Supreme Court.

The SCRA is full of the shameful cases exhibiting the cowardice of the justices of the Supreme Court in justifying every act of Marcos that unquestionably (except in the minds of his flunkies on the highest tribunal) violated the Constitution and the liberties of the people. The Constitution of 1973 was ratified like a barangay ordinance; suspected enemies of the regime were picked up and murdered; private properties were confiscated for private gain; civil liberties were violated; Ninoy Aquino was assassinated; Congress was replaced with a rubber-stamp Batasang Pambansa; and Amendment No. 6 insulated the despot from rightful accountability and retribution. All these and more were "legitimized" by a craven and covetous Supreme Court that remains the blackest disgrace in the annals of our judiciary.

Not so the present Supreme Court. This is the tribunal that only recently annulled Executive Order No. 464 for impinging on the inherent and express power of Congress to conduct inquiries in aid of legislation, ruled against government strictures against freedom of speech and the right of peaceful assembly, and last Wednesday checked another would-be dictator by annulling her Proclamation No. 1017 as an obvious attempt to place the Philippines under a new but no less vicious despotism.

"I like to think grandly of the Supreme Court justices now as like the great Lord Coke of England who, in answer to the intimidations and importuning of his monarch, intoned the ringing words that have since become the motto of all just courts: "I will do what becomes me as a judge."

I have been critical of it on many occasions, but now I sincerely and proudly say: "All honor to the Supreme Court of the Philippines!" The judicial robes become the justices like habiliments of courage and wisdom.

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