After 18 years in Supreme Court, Carpio retires

Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio has retired from the Supreme Court.

After 18 years, 935 decisions and more than a hundred opinions, many of which his colleagues say have become "canonical," Carpio on Saturday –October 26 turned 70 –the mandatory retirement age for members of the judiciary.

He said he bowed out of the judiciary with a zero backlog of cases.

His final ponencias include an order for the Energy Regulatory Commission to review its approval of Meralco's unbundled rates and a declaration as valid of the legal provision saying government nurses should get a minimum base pay of Salary Grade 15.

In the last en banc session he attended, Carpio voted to dismiss former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr.'s election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo, a minority position in a court that ruled to first hear the parties on several issues before proceeding.

His last words on the case were a warning against a change in court rules to "accommodate" Marcos, whom he said lost in the initial vote recount.

The jurist is also leaving behind the cases challenging President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, of which he had been in charge, but remain undecided on two years after they were filed.

"There was no more time because the documents are voluminous, so I cannot rush it also," he told reporters last week. He refused to say how he would have voted. Upon his retirement, the case will be reassigned to another justice.

In his years in the court, Carpio dissented in the acquittal of former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of plunder and the granting of bail to former senator and plunder defendant Juan Ponce Enrile and wrote the decision upholding a plunder charge against former senator Jinggoy Estrada.

He voted to declare the Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel as unconstitutional.

He voted against the continued detention of Senator Leila de Lima, the ouster of former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, the burial of Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, and the extensions of martial law in Mindanao.

Praising him for his "wisdom," Carpio's fellow justices said his opinions were "clear, erudite, strategic, and always with a perspective towards insisting on a just result that should benefit the Filipino people."

Leadership

Carpio never became chief justice but had, according to former chief justice Artemio Panganiban, intermittently served as acting chief for more than eight months. 

He did this for the last time in the week after the retirement of former chief justice Lucas Bersamin, whose appointment last year had also meant Carpio would never become chief.

Prior to that, Carpio declined his automatic nomination out of a refusal to benefit from Sereno's ouster. Teresita Leonardo-De Castro was appointed to replace Sereno.

He had also declined nomination in 2010, when then-chief justice Reynato Puno retired, because he was of the position that the president could not make midnight appointments.

But both Associate Justice Marvic Leonen and retired justice and former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales said they agree that Carpio was "the best chief justice we never had."

"He is always a solid anchor, a firm and impenetrable rock, and an immovable tower of strength that holds the Court together when it truly mattered," the incumbent High Court justices said in a plaque of recognition for Carpio.

He will have the retirement privileges of a chief justice.

Post-retirement

Carpio is known for his assertion of the Philippines' rights in the West Philippine Sea, a personal advocacy he said he will continue after his retirement.

He was one of the legal luminaries behind the Philippines' case against China before the international tribunal that found "no legal basis" for China's "nine-dash line" claim in the area in 2016.

He has repeatedly cautioned the government about its China policy. He said he would be willing to share with the government his opinion on the West Philippine Sea if sought.

"I'm always available to defend our sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea; I don't have to have any formal position," he said.

He said last year that it was "beside the point" that his stance on the maritime dispute could cost him the chief justice post.

"What is more important for the nation is that we preserve our sovereignty and sovereign rights because if we lose this, we lose that forever," he told CNN Philippines.

"That's far more important that any position. That's far more important than the presidency. I mean, the President can come and go, but our sovereignty should remain forever with us." —LBG, GMA News