Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court

Excerpts from the book, Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court, which will be launched March 16

Reynato Puno was a smart lawyer in his 30s, just starting his career when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972. A graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Law, where Marcos had obtained his law degree, Puno was then working with the Solicitor General’s office, headed by Estelito Mendoza.

Puno had returned from the US years earlier where he finished two post-graduate degrees: Master of Comparative Laws at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and Master of Laws at the University of California in Berkeley. Scholarly, steeped in books and a fast and prolific writer, he was, in Mendoza’s words, “analytical, he had a good mind, and a good knowledge of the law.”

Mendoza was a brilliant lawyer, one of the fine minds that Marcos tapped to implement his experiment of a “guided democracy.” But, in the post-Marcos years, Mendoza was unable to shake off his association with the authoritarian ruler and the dark and painful years that choked our democracy. He argued for martial law in cases brought to the Supreme Court, becoming its most visible defender.

It was an uncertain and perilous time. Asia’s first democracy, with its rambunctious press and festive elections, was suddenly silenced. Marcos blamed the communists for fueling protests and instability. He sent his political opponents and activists to prison. Others simply disappeared, snatched by government forces, much like the desaparecidos of Argentina.

Congress was shut down. Marcos ordered the Constitution rewritten and approved in people’s assemblies. The judiciary fell under the grip of one man.

Puno was one of Mendoza’s second-tier lawyers, his co-defender of martial rule. More than three decades later, when he was Chief Justice, Puno described this regime he helped perpetuate as one of a “slaughter of rights,” a period when the 1935 Constitution “was sent to the shredding machine.”

In a tribute he paid to the late Gerry Roxas in 2007 (he worked briefly in the Roxas law office), he said that the senator, who was a staunch opponent of martial rule, “showed us the way to deal with tyrants who trample on the civil rights of the people—and that is to strike no deal with them.”

But Puno, during eleven years of martial law, stayed on as counsel of the government. He appeared in the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the martial-law cases, including the dreaded Javellana v. Executive Secretary which sealed Marcos’s one-man rule. The Court ruled that the Constitution, which was ratified by a show of hands, was valid.

Fernando del Mundo, a journalist who covered one of the oral arguments on the Court remembered Puno as part of Mendoza’s panel, appearing in “one tragic hearing four months after martial law was declared in September 1972 on an opposition petition asking the high court to immediately act and stop Marcos from promulgating the decision of a rump plebiscite approving a new Constitution that gave him sweeping powers. In the midst of the debate, news was relayed to the Supreme Court that Marcos—at that very moment—had just issued in Malacañang a decree proclaiming that the plebiscite had approved by viva voce vote the Constitution that he said was now in effect. Caught flatfooted, the Justices looked stunned…. The Court later issued a decision declaring the petition argued by Lorenzo Tañada and the other opposition lights of the time—Jose Diokno, Francisco “Soc” Rodrigo, Jovito Salonga, Sedfrey Ordonez, Joker Arroyo—moot and academic.”

Oscar Orbos, who was a UP law student then, used to visit Puno and have discussions with him. They belonged to the same fraternity at the University of the Philippines, Alpha Phi Beta. UP was the most restive campus before martial law. Protests reached a climax during the so-called Diliman Commune of 1971 when police stormed the barricades and lobbed teargas at the students.

Orbos said in an interview, “We talked about his position on martial law. He told me it’s his work, that Marcos was doing something new and that they were defining what the law means, what martial law will be.”

After the Solicitor General’s office, Puno’s next stop was the Court of Appeals where Mendoza got him appointed. He stayed for only a year. Mendoza then plucked him out to be his deputy at the justice ministry. Whenever he was out of the country, he designated Puno acting minister. The two worked together for a total of 13 years.

Mendoza and Puno’s ties were not only professional; they were also personal. Rosa, Mendoza’s wife, was wedding godmother to Puno’s daughter, Ruth.

Puno kept a low profile throughout this time. He was barely known to the public, even to the lawyers who were on the opposing side in the martial-law cases. Mendoza was the star and Puno the protégé. Before he led the Supreme Court, he was an unknown figure, as he admitted in an interview in 2007. “Many sectors were complaining about my invisibility. A large segment of the public could not recognize me or did not have an opinion of me.”

But to his friends, like businessman Harry Angping, Puno was one of Marcos’s “bright legal minds.”

Puno effortlessly reconciled his work then with his high-profile advocacy for civil liberties and human rights as Chief Justice. He explained—in his sober voice and furrowed face—that “I don’t see any kind of inconsistency. As a solicitor, it is my job to defend the cases of government as best as I could. I go to another branch of government, the judiciary, and I perform the role of a judge or justice.”

When the People Power revolt in 1986 cut short his career in the executive branch, Puno returned to the Court of Appeals. He is proud of his record as the youngest, at 40, to be appointed to the appellate court.

Later, his interrupted stint in the Court of Appeals caused controversy when the Supreme Court reinstated him to his old rank in the roster of CA justices. This meant that he jumped over more senior Justices. “From number eleven in rank, he was promoted to number five,” wrote Justice Jose Campos in his memoir. Campos and another CA justice complained to the Supreme Court and they won their case.

Puno joined the Supreme Court in 1993 but not without minor difficulty. President Ramos’s legal counsel, Antonio Carpio, vetted the nominees, one of whom was Puno. It was his practice to interview preferred candidates to the Court and Puno wasn’t one of them. Puno then asked to meet with Carpio—and they did have a brief, forgettable conversation. Still, Carpio didn’t recommend him to Ramos because he was convinced that Puno, when on the Court, would vote for Estelito Mendoza’s clients, led by Marcos crony Eduardo Cojuangco. Puno, anyway, found a link to Ramos who vouched for his integrity. But as events later showed, Carpio’s gut feel was right.

Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court, a publication of Public Trust Media Group Inc., was launched yesterday March 16, Tuesday, 4 p.m., at One Serendra Social Hall, The Fort, Taguig City.  To place orders in advance, contact Newsbreak at tel. (+632) 920-0997, fax (+632) 920-3611, email admin@newsbreak.com.ph. Regular prices are P795 hardbound, P475 paperback. For more info, check www.shadowofdoubt.info