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Speech delivered by Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P. A. Sereno during the 2015 Search for Outstanding Judges and Clerks of Court on September 18, 2015 at the Manila Hotel

Honorable Presbitero Velasco Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme

Court, Retired Senior Associate Justice Josue N. Bellosillo, Justice Romeo

Callejo, Justice Angelina Sandoval-Gutierrez, Justice Adolf Azcuna, Retired

Court of Appeals Justice Aurora [Santiago-]Lagman, incumbent Justices of the

Court of Appeals, Justice Apolinario [D.] Bruselas [Jr.], I saw Justice Mario

Lopez there, and then [Justice] Manuel Barrios. Did I miss anyone else? The

incumbent Justices and the retired Justices of the Court of Appeals, JBC

(Judicial and Bar Council) member, Milagros “Mitoy” [Fernan] Cayosa, Dean

Manuel Diokno, Court Administrator Midas P. Marquez, Former Court

Administrator DCA (Deputy Court Administrator) [Zenaida N.] Elepaño,

Executive Head for Academic Affairs of The PHILJA (Philippine Judicial

Academy), Retired Court of Appeals Justice [Delilah Vidallon-] Magtolis, and

DCA Jenny [Lind R. Aldecoa-] Delorino, Honorable Executive Judges, Presiding

Judges, and all members and professional staff of the judiciary; but most of all

to the awardees themselves and their families.

I thank you as well as of course to our very generous benefactors today.

I thank you again for giving me the opportunity to be here with you this

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afternoon, and this is the fourth time actually since I assumed the mantle of

leadership that I have the honor of keynoting the awarding of the JEA (Judicial

Excellence Awards) Night. It has been an annual affair since 1991, when the

search for the judiciary’s outstanding judges and clerks of court was initially

conducted by the Foundation for Judicial Excellence.

By any stretch of the imagination, 24 years, a quarter of a century, is a

long period of time to be continuously conducting an activity or a program. It

can be said that JEA has become more than just an activity or a program; it has

become a tradition.

We are all familiar with family traditions but allow me to say that the

JEA ceremony is likened to a family reunion. The awardees tonight have been

screened and judged by panels and committees that include past JEA

awardees themselves. And therefore, it is only proper that the moment an

award is conferred then there is membership in a society. There is affinity

immediately to a family.

But above all else, as borne out by its name, the tradition which JEA

honors most, other than being part of a big grand family, is “excellence.” In

this one word are encompassed the virtues of integrity and independence,

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courage and competence. And I believe that when it comes to excellence, there

can be no compromise.

I found one compelling and yet simple definition of excellence, it means

“greatness – the very best”, and “achieving excellence is never easy to do. [And

it] is a quality that people really appreciate because it’s so hard to find.”1

There is, therefore value in acclaiming excellence in view of the human

need for validation, acknowledgment, and recognition. More than that, you the

awardees, serve as inspiration, role models, and even teachers to those

aspiring [for] excellence.

And for the most part, however, we all know that it is a lonely pursuit as

it involves a personal commitment that does not depend on the critique or

plaudits of others. I stress the importance of commitment here because we

Filipinos have often been criticized for being short-termed, for being ningas

cogon. Individually and as a people, we cannot sustain excellence because we

had just brief shining moments or episodes of glory. And therefore, in order to

sustain excellence in a real way, we have to give it consistent effort. And the

Judicial Excellence Awards and the Society which makes it possible is a way by

which we can propound and we can ensure this consistency.

1 http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/excellence, accessed September 14, 2015

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While earlier we heard testimonials from the court staff of our four

awardees, allow me as Chief Justice to relate to the audience the stories of the

record of the awardees speak of. It is an honor for me to not do chismis as our

choir sang about, but genuine story telling of the lives of these four

individuals.

Now [The Chief Justice Cayetano Arellano Awardee, Judge Rafael

Crescencio C.] Tan [Jr.] I have heard of since I was appointed as Chief Justice.

There was a brief stint at which he was supposed to be leading the downloading

of functions as Regional Court Administrator. But you know I thought that the

more wonderful part of his life is how he was able to make the transition from

being a professional solider to joining the legal profession and eventually

being a professor of law at Silliman University, and eventually as a judge. The

fact that I have here before me a man, a patriot, who loves his country so much

that he has gone on to have his time this year breaking the record of women

awardees. Considering that he has now become the rarity — a male awardee

in recent years for the Judicial Excellence Awards.

But he until now continues to call upon his military training when, as a

Reserve Officer of the Philippine Army, he led a platoon-size group of

volunteer reservists in relief efforts to victims of typhoons Yolanda, Queenie,

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Ruby, and Seniang. I think that the pursuit of excellence seems to be a habit

for him, for he is a repeat JEA winner; he was the recipient of the Justice Alex

Reyes Award [for Judicial Excellence] as MTC (Municipal Trial Court) judge in

2002. Appointed RTC (Regional Trial Court) judge in 2005, he decimated his

caseload by meticulously observing the one-day examination rule, the

continuous trial of cases, and pre-trial techniques. The local Bar, that has all

praises for him, notes that as a presiding judge of a Special Court for Drugs

Cases, he renders judgments in less than 30 days from the time these cases are

submitted for resolution. The results speak for themselves: he only has as of

2014 end, 101 pending cases, all of them criminal, a 70% decrease from his

initial inventory of 337 criminal cases. Judge Tan, mabuhay ka!

Our Don Antonio Madrigal Awardee, the aptly named Judge Juris S.

Dilinila-Callanta of the MeTC (Metropolitan Trial Court), Branch 42, Quezon

City, has also made significant inroads in the caseload of her sala. Since 2010,

she was able to reduce by two-thirds the number of active cases in her docket,

from 1,489 to 592 cases. From June 2010 to July 2015, she disposed of 4,696

cases, which is around 900 cases more than the 3,765 total number of cases

raffled to her sala for the same period. Those impressive numbers show her

commitment to the various reform initiatives of the Supreme Court for a faster

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and more effective administration of justice. And she is part of the most active

judges in Quezon City in our reform programs in the Justice Zone. She was,

first, Second Vice Executive Judge in 2012; then First Vice Executive Judge in

2013; next, Acting Executive Judge in 2014; and ultimately, we appointed her

as Executive Judge of the MeTC in Quezon City this year. Judge Juris, thank you

for all your hard work!

Doing more than what is expected of her appears to be the mantra of the

winner of the JEA Outstanding Clerk of Court (Single Sala)/ Branch Clerk of

Court (Multiple Sala) - Second Level Courts category, Atty. Mischelle R.

Maulion-Jocson of the RTC (Regional Trial Court), Branch 59 of Angeles City,

Pampanga. Is Judge [Omar T.] Viola here with you? I can assure that when

Judge Omar Viola is on the video, he can be a distraction. You know he is such

a well-loved judge and I am very happy that it is his Clerk of Court that is

getting this award today. When the video was being relayed to us, you could

already see both the initiative of Atty. Jocson and her imagination in preparing

a work flow from raffling to submission of cases for resolution, complete with

this mission statement: “to provide speedy dispensation of justice within the

bounds of the law and applicable rules.” When a court interpreter is not

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present, she volunteers as one. She also conducts regular meetings with the

staff to evaluate their performance and discuss areas for improvement.

Ms. Rowena Dacumos Solomon, the JEA Awardee for the Outstanding

Clerk of Court (Single Sala)/Branch Clerk of Court (Multiple Sala) – First Level

Courts category was noted by the IBP (Integrated Bar of the Philippines-La

Union Chapter) on how she had integrated computer technology in both the

filing and reporting and retrieval systems in her court. And we have taken

note of her “exceptional sense of leadership and responsibility in threshing

out the mismanaged records of cases in her branch and she takes the very

time-consuming and laborious task of examining the records of pending,

archived and disposed cases in order to have a genuine inventory of the

same.” (Resolution dated December 9, 2002, AM No. 01-10-284-MTCC)

I cannot remember which of the two Clerks of Court is also being noted

by one of her staff for sending a letter reminder even to litigants, and that’s

just so outstanding. It is just so mind-boggling that such kind of effort had

been poured under very difficult conditions. So Atty. Jocson and Ms. Solomon,

I thank both of you.

I commend all four awardees because their excellence has been forged

in the spirit of sacrifice and service: sacrifice, because when I was

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administering the oath I was already reaffirmed what everyone knows: to be

in the judiciary means foregoing a life of luxury; service, because the judiciary

is entrusted with one of the most sacred responsibilities of society, that of

dispensing justice, without which a society cannot long survive.

This is the reason why it is incumbent upon us, the leaders of this

judiciary, not only to have this annual award giving, but to foster an

environment that will really encourage a culture of excellence by providing

the needed infrastructure, resources, and support for our judges, clerks of

court, and other court personnel.

And this is what I want to share with you today by way of

encouragement. The Clerk of Court from Angeles City, Atty. Jocson, and Judge

Callanta already knows very well what we have been doing by way of judicial

reform. But allow me to tell those who have not been reached by our pilot

programs yet what has been going on so you will know that eventually the

culture of excellence will be there for more and more of your kindred spirits

to thrive.

We have of course, and Judge Juris has been participant to this, we were

able to have a very successful run of the one-time case decongestion program,

which we called Hustisyeah!. When it was officially launched in 2013, if Judge

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Juris remembers, the judges of Quezon City were so reluctant because they

thought we were going to scrutinize them with the searing lens of a

magnifying lens because they did not know actually that what we just wanted

to do was actually a replication of what our two outstanding Clerks of Court

and what Judge Juris and Judge Tan are already doing in their courts, and

which is to have a commonsensical, pragmatic approach to resolving

congestion by having a genuine inventory of cases. Now since we launched it

in 2013, it has [already resulted] in a 30% caseload reduction in a matter of 14

months. So it is right now being rolled out in Angeles City — and Atty. Jocson

would know about this — in Makati City, Pasig, Davao, and Cebu.

I will tell you already why we need to have success stories of this kind.

When we presented our program to the Department of Budget and

Management (DBM) and really showed them our data, they were just so

floored with the fact that from a case inventory of 33,000 cases — yes we

inventoried 33,000 case files — it was reduced to only 21,000 cases. That

resulted in such a dramatic turnaround of cases that when the DBM was asked

if they can support the hiring of 638 Case Decongestion Officers for 2016, they

immediately said yes. Just imagine for 2016, starting January, we were

provided the funds by the government to hire 638 Grade 18 lawyers and law

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graduates who can help in the further decongestion of our remaining heavily

congested courts. Now we are going to deploy them, and we will be able to

cover already 54% of the total caseload in our courts nationwide. But it could

not be done unless we had a combination of several things. First, a good idea.

And you Judge Juris, you Judge Tan, already have so many good ideas about

how to solve congestion in our courts. Second, present them to funders who

are willing to provide the money for a pilot of these programs. And you see

that in Quezon City because of this outstanding success, so many development

partners are now coming to us and asking to be part of the action. As I told

you it is already being deployed right now in Angeles, Makati, Pasig, Davao,

Cebu, and even in Lapu-Lapu. And for 2016 and 2017 we have money coming

from USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and the

European Union, together with the money that we were able to get from the

national government.

We, however, have to contend with a recent phenomenon we have

noticed which is that the prosecutors seem to be recently increasing the

number of filings of criminal complaints before our courts.

We have also put in place an assisting courts system. Assigning Manila

for example to assist Quezon City and Makati City, assigned Cebu judges to

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assist Lapu-Lapu. And we will have these twinning programs as we keep on

looking at the problem of congestion.

Another very dramatic intervention we have created is the E-court

System — and Justice [Apolinario D.] Bruselas is the head of the Technical

Governance Council on that — which is an automated case management

system on a larger scale than the one set up by Atty. Solomon. You were the

one — aha! by Miss Solomon — but you were able to set up the case

management system, right? So just imagine she is not a lawyer, but she has set

up a case management system. So Justice Apolinario, I hope you can make our

JEA awardees part of the pool of brilliant minds who can keep on giving bright

ideas.

You see, the case management system that is being rolled out now

under the E-court System will give not only the presiding judge and the clerk

of court the ability to find out the status of cases, the number of detainees, the

aging of cases, and the system will automatically generate reports for them. It

also allows the executive judge to monitor what is going on in all the branches

in his jurisdiction. Eventually, it will be linked up to the Court Administrator’s

desktop himself, and eventually at the end of the day it will be linked to me. So

the time is coming when I will be able to see the status of all cases nationwide.

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And it can only succeed if the committee headed by Justice Apolinario, the

Computerization Committee of the Supreme Court which I head, and the

Supreme Court keeps on pushing for this full roll-out of a nationwide

connectivity program. Our endgame is by the end of 2019, most of our courts,

except for a very few missionary posts, will be already interconnected. If we

do succeed, it is really possible that we will be the only agency of government

that has nationwide connectivity. And it is because of people like you that has

been making all of these reforms possible.

Now as of August 2015, last month, Justice Apolinario please confirm

this, there are already 82 operational e-courts covering all the courts in

Quezon City, Angeles City, Lapu-Lapu, and take special note, the Typhoon-

stricken Tacloban City. Just imagine everyone is bemoaning what has been

happening in Yolanda a year and a half after the devastation happened. But

the great secret for the judiciary, there is no way to look but up. And the

courts in Tacloban City are on electronic court mode.

In the second half of 2015, we are going to roll-out 85 more electronic

courts in Davao City, Cebu City, and Makati City. Next year, it will be further

rolled-out to 120 more courts in Manila, Pasig City, and Mandaluyong City. By

the end of 2016, it will be in 287 trial courts, and we will see all these courts

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will be handling about 30% of the total caseload of the Philippine court

system. From 2017 onwards, we are hoping to get the support of the public to

allow us to get more money from Congress so that we can really have a

nationwide roll-out of the E-court System side by side with the nationwide

interconnectivity of all courts in the country.

A feature of the E-court System, the Automated Hearing System, has

transformed the entire courtroom into an automated trial format. This means

that during trial, every activity is captured electronically, right there and then,

including orders issued by the judge, minutes of the hearing conducted, the

testimony taken, the marking of evidence, the issuance of writs and court

processes. This is done by linking the computers of the judge, the

stenographer, the interpreter, allowing them to view and edit in real time the

documents that are being generated. As of date, 100 courts in Quezon City,

Angeles City, Tacloban, Davao, and Lapu-Lapu have been provided the

equipment and training to conduct automated hearings. Most of these courts

are now implementing the same. Automated hearing is targeted to be

implemented in all NCR (National Capital Region) courts by 2016.

The change has been so dramatic and fantastic that one judge even went

to the extent of buying his own monitor, put it on his wall, so that when he is

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typing or entering the edits of the order he is about to issue, everyone in the

courtroom can see it immediately. After the editing is done, it is printed on a

printer that is linked to the stenographer’s desktop and then it is immediately

printed and served there and then. We are now going to do away with the

snail mail system. Every process of that kind saves at least two months for

every incident that has to go through the snail mail system, and where the

judge still has to return to her chamber to dictate the order, to have someone

type it up, for the typewritten document to go back to her, for her to enter her

edits until she is finally satisfied, and for that kind of document to finally be

mailed and reach the parties.

We have already identified more than 20 software application systems

for our ICT (Information Communication Technology) needs, which are

personal productivity and improved court and case management. Judge Tan,

from Silliman you can send all the communications you want to Padre Faura

simply by using our automated system. Nobody needs to generate a report

anymore, the system immediately puts it. All leave applications, all HR

(Human Resource) systems will be online. That is the kind of efficiency we

want to provide you because we value the work-life balance that you have to

achieve so that you can enjoy your beautiful wife and your wonderful family.

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So this is the kind of life we want to give you, members of the judiciary

and our wonderful court personnel. These will be backed up by an

interconnected system that will link up to regional hubs and that will

ultimately go to two data centers: one in the Supreme Court, and one in the

disaster recovery site in Angeles City so that even if the big one strikes us, the

data of the judiciary will not be wiped out.

So the future eventually is digitization because one disaster can wipe

out all our paper documents. You’ve seen that in Tacloban, you saw that in

Cagayan de Oro City. We are going to prevent the kind of catastrophe that

attends those disasters by going digital.

So actually when I had a meeting with the NEDA (National Economic

and Development Authority) Secretary a few days ago, he actually affirmed to

me that it is possible that if we succeed, circa 2019, circa 2020, in really

having nationwide connectivity, we will be the first public sector unit.

Now with respect to your halls of justice, this has been the first time that

money in significant amounts is being given to the judiciary for our

infrastructure budget. We have by 2016 the tune of 210 million for the

building of 12 halls of justice in addition to the multi-year obligated allotment

for the new Supreme Court complex that will rise in Fort Bonifacio to the tune

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of several billions of pesos. I will not give you the budget yet because we need

to bid it. But I can tell it will be really a beautiful building because the

standard is for green high-technology building. But we already have the

commitment of the national government and we are now ready to go through

the stages of groundbreaking.

The Manila Hall of Justice under Justice Presbitero Velasco has just

awarded the DAED (Detailed Architectural and Engineering Design). For the

first time, there is now a contract for the Manila Hall of Justice which had a

groundbreaking for I think seven or eleven times, several times. So now we

have the DAED, there is money for the Detailed Architectural and Engineering

Design. I want the constituents of the Manila jurisdiction to join; I want the

various levels of court leaders to be very active participants. And I have just

agreed with Justice Velasco that part of the Manila Hall of Justice will be the

court of the future. We will have an experimental station there that will really

be high-tech, the same way that they have Rocket 21 in Virginia. So this is our

museum for imagining what can be possible in the future.

Now in addition to what the GAA (General Appropriations Act) is going

to give us in 2016, we have already set aside money not only from the JDF

(Judiciary Development Fund) but also from the savings from the past GAAs of

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the Supreme Court. And we have already of course organized the Justice

Sector Coordinating Council, and Judge Juris is a witness of what is happening

there because we have the justice zone in Quezon City where the key pillars of

the criminal justice system are on coordinated mode. Justice Apolinario

Bruselas is also helping me there.

So you have already seen a roll-out of many benefits to court employees.

In April 2014 everyone is now on automated payroll mode. Court

Administrator Marquez, let’s give him a big hand. So you do not have stuffed

envelopes anymore to the lower courts, you are getting everything through

your ATM. Problema lang sinasanla ung ATM. But if we just put aside that

problem, I have received a lot of thanks because we are on automated system.

Since this year, all lower court employees already have Medocard, right? And

that is an HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) that is rolled-out on a

nationwide basis, the first time we have ever been able to provide health

management services of this kind.

So this is all intended to impress upon you the fact that it is the

institution itself that must encourage these individual pursuits of excellence

by continuously encouraging them. And that I am hoping that this tradition of

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excellence will permeate every level of the judiciary from the Supreme Court

all the way down to the first-level courts.

And since excellence means we have to evolve in our way of doing

things and not stand still lest we lose ground, I have suggestions that the JEA

may wish to consider. Two years ago I publicly committed to support your

request for financial support. I have yet to receive such request. So I have

already committed to you that as long as it is possible, as long as it is within

reasonable grounds and within the COA’s (Commission on Audit) strictures, it

will happen. And because I am committed to persuading my colleagues to

releasing money for the pursuit of this JEA, may I ask the awardees and the

members of the Society to help in the development of performance metrics

that may help not only in assisting the Society itself but in rewarding

performance in a judiciary-wide basis. You see, we are trying to have a

professional performance measurement system on place. Not only are we

evolving a performance-based incentive system, and this will take a few years

to design, but it is the judiciary’s performance as a whole also that will inform

the kind of budgetary support that we will get from the national government

and the kind of success that our budget team will get whenever they go back

to Congress. We want evidence of outstanding work, we want performance

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targets that are realizable, that are high enough to be challenging, but are

really going to accurately measure how well we are improving our work. And

the second, is that I wish that the JEA will be expanded to confer awards not

only to judges but also to other court personnel. You have interpreters, you

have sheriffs, you have legal researchers, and such other categories that you

may decide to include.

I know that this is hard work, but the JBC is also well represented here

today and I can affirm to you that without Justice Lagman and Atty. Fernan-

Cayosa, we will not have the string of outstanding achievements that the JBC

has demonstrated in the past years. For the past year alone, can you imagine

the JBC processed 7,000 applications for 109 positions? On top of that, the

processing, if you notice, is already online. And you can just imagine the kind

of work they are going through because you already have essay question-type

examinations for applicants to the judiciary. Their interviews are also more

incisive, more focused and right now they are designing a questionnaire that

will have more directed questions that are intended to catch the applicant

when he will be asked whether he can indeed avoid conflict of interest,

patterned after some of the best practices in other countries. So this is being

highlighted because I think that the Society and the JBC can profit from a

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synergy between their activities. If the Society wishes to validate the

information, applications, and claims that you are getting, the JBC — I’m sorry

three members of the JBC of course, Justice Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez,

forgive me for that lapse — you can just ask Justices Gutierrez, Lagman, and

Atty. Cayosa for validation of the information that the Society is getting. In

turn, they can tell you the sad stories that we are discovering and they can

also tell you about how we can have a more pro-active search system because

it will be inevitable that there are the shy types who do not want to apply. We

have started to float them, those names are starting to float at the top simply

because of a survey system that the JBC is starting to experiment with among

law practitioners. Law practitioners have been volunteering good names to us,

and I thank the IBP for that.

And I can also think of the fact that when the Lawyer Information System

is on place and the Information System works this way, and I’ve already told

the IBP it works this way. The moment a law student applies to take the Bar

examination, he has an identification code, and that code and that data base

follows him all throughout his life. When he becomes a lawyer, eventually he

is going to be given a revalidated code as a member of the Bar. When he enters

the judiciary he is going to have a second revalidation of the code in another

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capacity this time. So it will track the professional life of the lawyer and the

fact that this database will exist in the future means we can have a more

scientific search for the best practices and for the most outstanding work in

the country. And we can make use of a lot of the technologies to push out in

front really outstanding individuals and outstanding performance.

So the call continues from my office to the board of the Society for

Judicial Excellence, I am always ready to help, my colleagues in the Court are

more than ready to help just tell us how we can help. And taking off from the

metaphor of the German poet Bertolt Brecht, that “justice is the bread of the

people,” I thank you that in your corner of the world, in the lightened corner of

your world, you have provided plentiful bread to our people.

I thank the Society for Judicial Excellence and its staff, the Board of

Judges, the screening committees, and the various benefactors for dutifully,

faithfully undertaking this year’s Search for Outstanding Judges and Clerks of

Court, the process which ultimately culminated this year’s awarding. I

commend their untiring efforts, which they cannot chalk up in case of caseload

disposition, as in fact it takes them away from their adjudicative work. But

actually the work that they are continuing speaks of the fact that they

continue to be our modern day heroes, untiring in their efforts to provide

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what is excellent and what is good for our people. You the collective presence

of whom I am so impressed of, is emerging to be the visible, shining examples

of the best and the brightest in the judiciary.

To this year's Judicial Excellence Awardees, may I exhort you, from the

good book in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, to remain “blameless and

innocent, ...without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,

among whom you shine as lights...” (Philippians 2:15)

Mabuhay po kayong lahat, at nananalangin po ako na sa inyong tulong

mas maging malakas ang pananaig ng batas at lalong lalaganap ang

katarungan sa ating bayan.