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Speech delivered by Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P. A. Sereno during the 4th Plenary Assembly of the PHILJA Corps of Professor on August 29, 2014 at the CA Auditorium, Court of Appeals, Manila

Good morning everyone, I thank you. Please take your seats my friends. I

apologize for whatever delay I may have caused.

I understand of course the importance of this historic assembly of the PHILJA

Corps of Professors and I thank you for responding to the call for a new look at how

judicial education and training is going to be conducted in this country. This is

important especially in light of the fact that after many conversations among the

Justices, it had been decided that the Supreme Court of the Philippines will take a

lead in putting forth innovative ideas in education in the judiciary, and together with

the rest of our educators in the legal academe, principally through the Philippine

Association of Law Schools, it will also try to influence to a certain extent the

transformation of legal education in the Philippines, because it wants to take a lead

in the rest of Asia. And I have already shared with Justice [Adolfo] Azcuna this

vision and I have really asked him to take a lead especially when it comes to

alternative dispute resolution which is judiciary lead, that we should take a lead

because we are known to be leaders in that field.

But in addition to that, I was saying, and the Court concurred with me, that it

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is time that we are able to make our voice heard because the Philippines is not only

able to blend the best of the Western legal education [and] innately its Asian

approaches to solving problems especially those that are faced by the judges daily

will create for us a synergy in approaching how judges are trained, a synergy of the

best of the East and the West.

Thus, I requested if it is possible for the Philippine Judicial Academy to go

through a curriculum review not only with respect to the content of the curriculum

but rather the approaches and techniques of mastery, of information sharing, of

solution creation in the way that judges are trained. And I am deeply grateful to

Justice Azcuna and the leadership of the Philippine Judicial Academy that they have

heeded this call.

Largely, what does the Supreme Court expect from the PHILJA Corps of

Professors? May I say that the Supreme Court request that the PHILJA Corps of

Professors be more sensitive to the changing moods of the times, and that the

PHILJA must understand that there are many new areas of law that the Philippines

will have to grapple with. Now, that is with respect to the substance, but we are also

blessed right now with the fact that there are many studies on how adult education,

professional education, and especially high-level executive education is being

conducted worldwide. No longer are the rest of our counterparts hewing to a

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classroom type, Socratic type question and answer method, especially not ever

anymore the cartilla method, but we are more into an experiential mode of learning,

and this is what the hope is for PHILJA to hearken to. So I shared with Justice

Azcuna a small thought piece, and I hope that perhaps some of those ideas can be

seen in the light of trying to improve the efficacy of the learning modules that are

being launched in PHILJA.

If we are able to do this our facilities, which are world-class in Tagaytay right

now, will attract participants not only from outside the country because of the beauty

of the place as well as the excellence of the facilities, but it will also attract

participants because they know that we have a forward looking model of training

and education. Just today, I understand that of course Justice Azcuna is going to host

the former Chief Justice and now an Associate Justice of the Guam Supreme Court

because the idea is to bring the Chief Justices of all the Pacific island countries and

territories to PHILJA next summer for an intensive training workshop. They are

there not only to inspect the facilities but to find out to what extent the model of

education that they have been conducting among their judges is adaptable in the

Philippine setting and to what extent also the Philippine modules are also adaptable

in their own jurisdiction. I think they mean it as [a form of] goodwill but I have also

of course heard requests not only from them but also for intensive training for the

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Chief Justices of Nepal and Bhutan, and we will have more of those requests for

greater interaction, which leads me to try to look at how we will evolve education in

the Philippine Judicial Academy.

Now the discussions, especially in the lunch time discussions that we have

been having at the Supreme Court, some of those ideas that are being floated not

only have to do with how PHILJA's educational module are to be restructured, but we

have also been thinking of how to create a core of 2,000 to 3,000 men and women

who are going to be set apart, some of whom will be handpicked young as they are

and to go through a rigorous training so that they can even be culturally molded to

be immune to political and material pressures. I am thinking of models like what is

happening in France, Germany, Korea and to a certain extent, also Japan.

In Korea, the Korean Chief Justice was saying that once they enter the

judiciary, they know that they are already to be set apart from the political sphere.

They are not ordinary lawyers or legal professionals. They are to be devoted to a

cause, to a mission, and that is also the long term hope that we have. I thank [Ateneo

Law School] Dean [Sedfrey] Candelaria for spearheading the concept of a course on

the judicial mind, and I think San Beda College of Law, the graduate school, for even

having a course on judicial education, and I think that some are thinking, Centro

Escolar, if I'm not mistaken has a course on court management. These only shows

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that we are now trying to be more operations-oriented in a certain sense by

allowing a peek into really how a good judge is formed, informed, and how he

performs. So, these are some of the ideas that we should I think be tackling, how

early do we orient our students to a life in the judiciary. Do we already entice them

with a prospect of having a career, by saying that the top students can consider a

career in the judiciary, whereby they can go through an intensive training first as

legal researchers, then as clerks of court, and eventually land a judgeship position?

How different is a judicial mind from that of a litigator? What are the habits

and practices of litigators and prosecutors that we do not want our judges to

imbibe? On the other hand, what real life experiences do we want our judges to

have, so that we can say that they are really the Renaissance men and women from

among the legal professionals who are going to be set apart because they exceed

excellently in every way, and therefore they are in a moral and intellectual position

to pass upon the question of what is right or wrong in a justiciable controversy? I

have therefore requested that maybe we can have a career track per type of

participants within the set time frame. For example right now, we are now thinking

of the guidelines for cybercrime courts.

Now, you have to put this side by side with the commitment of the judiciary

that we are going to launch [the] continuous trial system in the country. Yesterday in

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my second press conference that has been annually conducted, I already announced

the fact that there are 25 volunteer trial court judges who have committed to start

conducting continuous trials in their courts. There are two commercial court judges

there, several drug court [judges], many family court judges, and many regular court

judges. Now, what does this imply on judicial education? That means that when we

get the judges, from the time that we get the appointment papers, we already plan

their program of orientation. They have to first understand of course the basics of

the rules that you have already.

But in addition to that, there are already innovative guidelines that we have in

the court been approving—the guidelines in Quezon City, which is going to be

expanded in several other cities. In other words, they have to understand the cutting-

edge innovations that we are introducing at the court in procedural reform. But not

only must they be good, not only in the traditional, but also in the cutting-edge types

of procedural rules that we have been issuing, they must also know how to operate

in an E-court setting. The E-Court program has been funded by the USAID. By the

end of 2015, we would already have 25% of all total caseloads nationwide embraced

within the E-Court system; and if we can get the funding from the national

government, we hope that by 2018, more or less 60% of all courts nationwide would

be in an E-court mode, which means that the recording of incidents in an E-court

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would not longer be paper-based. In other words, reports are going to be generated

monthly, and because the inventoring and the reporting system manually takes up

so much time, we are going to basically be freeing up one month of a judge's

working time. That is just the E-Court system.

The continuous trial system also will have a game-changing impact on all

litigants. Just imagine, if a litigant will now be able to say that if he is under a

continuous trial judge, and his case is one of those that is chosen even at the pilot

stage, he can expect the termination of his case to end in about a year to two years,

maybe even six months, because some of drug court's judges are saying they can

finish drugs cases in as early as six months, because we already counted the amount

of time required for a trial if it is continuous and it is no more really than one week.

We have the E-subpoena already, and we have a 95% compliance rate by police

witnesses in drugs cases. This is already moving drugs cases at a very fast clip. So

any one who enters the judiciary and even those who are in the judiciary must

already be oriented to the system. They are also going to be oriented to the

continuous trial system. So the whole experience of being trained as being a judge,

must be reviewed in the light of these fast—the reforms that are fast taking place.

Sometime in the first quarter of next year, we hope to launch the pilot courts that

will experiment with Rules 22 and 24 of the proposed Revised Rules of Civil

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Procedure.

So just imagine if we can change the landscape for litigators, where right now

in two courts in Quezon City, there are two courts that have automated hearings—

and what are these courts with automated hearings? These are courts which are

basically electronic courts that are using judicial forms that prepares the orders that

they anticipate, that they will be issuing the following day, when hearings are

conducted on motions. You know what the experience of lawyers have been? After

the hearing is conducted on a motion, the judge dictates because he already has the

template. It's not difficult because he already has a template and it is on his screen.

What the judge only does is to take out the portions that are not applicable because

the system is such that it can be a tick-off system. He doesn't have to reinvent the

wheel? He doesn't have to be afraid that he's missing a formula. He just has to

review the form, make it applicable to the incident that is before him. Finalize it and

edit it on his desk then give the order to have it printed within minutes. So the

lawyers of both parties are there. They get the orders of the judges right there and

then in a matter of minutes. That takes away two months from the time that the

judges has to, in the afternoon after the parties depart—you who are judges know

this—you have to sit, review the orders, and write it up and maybe the following day

or two days after, that's the time you are able to finalize the order, and somebody has

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to post it in the post office and of course it would have to be classified there, and

that takes a period of two months. The experience in the automated hearings is no

longer than that.

The lawyers are saying, “Ang sarap naman. Alam na ng aming kliyente na

talagang um-attend kami ng bista.” Kasi, they immediately bring home a copy of the

order that had been signed by the judge and already have proof. So there is no delay

from the required further notices, no dispute anymore as to what the order will

contain. This is but a small part of the experience that they are going to have. We

will already have e-filing under the Quezon City expedited rules on jail decongestion.

Service by SMS and E-mail is already allowed. In the continuous trial courts, all

notices are going to be done electronically, so we are already pushing the envelope

further and bringing everyone into an environment where there is no excuse for

delay, there is no excuse for inefficiency. In fact our judges have gone even providing

services even beyond their call of duty.

In addition to the templates for judicial forms that they have created, they

have also created forms that the prosecutors can use, motions that practitioners can

use, and we are going to expand more and more of this and try to make them

downloadable on the web, so that practitioners have no reason they are being

delayed because they have to dream up a motion, most of which are de kahon

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anyway. So this is the future that we are going to encourage, and the management

skill of the judge is critical to the success of the continuous trial system. If the judge

is sufficiently experienced and sufficiently smart, and they have a good sense of

people skills, he or she will be able to manage the expectations of the parties and

already identify the issues. You know that many of that issues beleaguering our

courts are not really that difficult. They are already identifiable. It is only by pushing

the idea that we can manage our cases nationwide, by giving more authority to the

judge, by giving him a lot of creative leeway within certain bounds, that we hope to

improve the experiences of the people with the judicial system.

We cannot of course succeed unless the prosecutors and the public attorneys

and the IBP are on board, that is why we are going to launch in October the so-called

Justice Zone concept. It is like an economic zone, meaning it is an identified area

where enough elements of reform are present so that you will see the court system,

the prosecutorial system, the public assistance system, the police system, the IBP all

coordinating their activities so that there is no delay and there is efficiency in the

system, all the while respecting judicial independence. That is the future that we

face.

Just imagine if we are able to have a success of the first 25 trial courts, and the

roll-out of the electronic courts continue at the pace happening right now. Then, the

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perception of the judiciary will inevitably have to change, and with every

improvement you know the outcome. Every notch that we get in the rank in the

eyes of our people will create even more expectations on their part, and even more

pressure on us to reform. That is why I request that the entire Corps of Professors

of PHILJA [to] have a new look at things. We can have a judicial education that is set

by career stages and we have a certain time frame. In other words, we set a module

for judges. We can have programs for those who have been there for five to six

years, judges for—programs for those who have been there for six to ten years, and

for judges who have been there for longer than that. And please note that the

commitment of the JBC is to be sensitive to what PHILJA is able to accomplish. We

are not looking only at the monitoring capability of the Office of the Court

Administrator for administrative disciplinary cases. We are looking at how PHILJA is

going to train these judges, because I have made a commitment that we will create a

professional merit-based promotion system to the extent that we can keep the

politicians out—of course without saying—but if we can do that for the judges, then

they will be very much appreciate and there is a greater incentive for them to

perform knowing their performance is being tracked and it is being inputted to a

system that will somehow find or try to find a way to reward them for the work that

they have given.

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Now I have already said that the long term goal for the human resources

development program of the judiciary is to have professionalized track system. One

is the adjudicatory track which the PHILJA is right now intently providing. But in

addition to the adjudicatory track, there should be a non-adjudicatory track and we

will also have to look at the non-judge personnel of the judiciary to find out if we can

have more professionalized systems of recruiting, selecting and training clerks of

court, legal researchers, stenographers, sheriffs, and interpreters.

And then may I ask if—the question still has to be answered on whether it is

time for PHILJA to be offering degree programs. In other words, considering the

amount of resources that we are already pouring into PHILJA, and considering that

we are trying to have a specialized education for judges, why should we not have a

degree program that recognizes what we are doing anyway, so that judges or public

servants who want to improve their credentials need not consider their PHILJA stint

to have been non-contributory to their academic credentials? We can consider

thinking about that. But this is a matter that you have to pore over seriously, and

may I ask that we have more interactive learning methods, as against the traditional

delivery format? The idea is to match the best methods to the educational goals and

the audience. And the fourth is, if we are really going to be very professional about

it, then the discussion between PHILJA and the Office of the Court Administrator,

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and especially the judges must be intense on how PHILJA courses must be

calendared, so that we can maximize the learning potential of the courses of PHILJA

and at the same also not allow judges to blame PHILJA for the delay in the disposition

of cases, which is right now happening as I get feedback from some of the judges.

This is important because we are pushing for the pending case rate to be

lowered down by a dramatic degree and I have already set that the initial idea we had

was that a normal caseload for a judge should be 300. Now, I'm saying that we can

even be more ambitious to push it down to 200 if we really want a continuous trial

system. But so many courts especially in Metro Manila, at least 175 courts

nationwide have loads of more than 500 each, so it is important that PHILJA is very

helpful in addressing management issues on how to bring those cases down. So

PHILJA I think we should also have a small orientation on how we do the Hustisyeah!

Program, the dramatic intervention we are bringing in order to bring down the

caseloads of judges.

And of course we are asking that there be an effective needs assessment

mechanism for PHILJA. [The] design of these mechanism, the survey, the

questionnaire I know cost a lot of money, but money should not be an objection. You

tell us how much is needed and I will be the one to tell you where the money will

come from. I will not let it be a hindrance to how you are going to decide on the best

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ways by which PHILJA can have a genuine needs assessment program, how it can

make fantastic changes to its learning modules, how it can create more interactive

learning methods, how it can make use of the case study methods, how it can

revolutionize really judicial education in this country.

I have a lot more details in the paper that I had sent to Justice Azcuna and I'm

sure that we don't have the time to discuss those details today. The message here is

that the Court is not going to step backwards. We are not going to retreat. The last

century not even—but we are looking forward to this century. We are looking

forward to leadership in the region in this century. Regardless of the economic

constraints that we have right now, the Court is actually ambitious in its court

agenda.

Can you just imagine I heard several trial court judges say that never did they

think that it would be possible in their lifetime to see the continuous trial system

being implemented? But next month, 25 courts are going to launch the system. If we

can have 200 courts by the end of next year adopting that system you can imagine

that kind of regard that the public will now have for the judicial branch of

government, and you can imagine that they will be less cynical about lawyers and

the story about the lawyer who turned over a case to his son, and when the son was

able to terminate a case, received a scolding from his father because that case was

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the one responsible for his education—that kind of story will never be peddled

again, because the business model of the lawyer is now going to change. He will

earn his keep not by the length of delay he is able to exact from the system, not in the

amount of duplicitous or multiple hearings on the same matter he is able to inject in

the process, but it is the quality of the service he is able to provide.

Note that this is not going to one-sided because on the court side we are

trying to bring down the operational cost of the lawyers by devising systems that

will allow E-filing, as we have started partial E-filing right now with the Supreme

Court. We had hope this will signal the fact that we are sensitive to the operational

cost of having messengers and so much reproductive costs embedded in the fees

and out of pocket expenses that lawyers have to tackle. We were hoping that you

would be appreciating the fact that we are also planning on an E-calendaring system

where arrangements on trial dates can already be had through electronic means and

notices even of cancellations will already be through electronic means, so the

amount of drudgery that is involved in going to court and waiting until your case is

called only to have it canceled because the other party is not there. That is

something that we want to already obliterate. We are also going to provide forms for

lawyers. We are trying to find ways so lawyers can also say that the court is not their

enemy, the court is there to assist them to provide more productive outputs for their

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clients.

So it will be a win-win proposition for everyone. No one is going to lose in the

new system except those who are profiting from non-transparency, from

obfuscation, from delay. But everyone else who wants work-life balance in the life of

judges, in the life of practitioners will welcome a new era that we are ushering in in

experiences of the public with Philippine courts, and the expectation is that PHILJA

will lead the way.

So I thank you from the bottom of my heart, on behalf of all my colleagues in

the Supreme Court. We look forward to your meaningful discussion on these and we

are eager to hear your new inputs and new designs on how PHILJA will conduct its

training of judges, non-judge judiciary personnel, the allied service sectors which we

periodically provide service to, and all those who look forward to leadership on

judicial education to be led by the very distinguished Philippine Judicial Academy.

To its leadership, its Corps of Professors, Mabuhay po kayo! And

Congratulations!