SOME Filipinos are, wrongly, saying that there is now a constitutional crisis. No, There is no constitutional crisis yet. Thanks to the wisdom of the senator-judges in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renata C. Corona. And thanks too to the wisdom of the Supreme Court justices who have decided to act circumspectly on the petition of the Chief Justice for the High Court to stop the impeachment trial on constitutional grounds, the infirmities of the process and the abuse of his human rights.

Had the majority of the Supremes acted in favor of the CJ’s petition on Thursday, they would have ordered the trial to stop. And that would have paved the way for a constitutional crisis.

But even then perhaps there would bo no crisis. There would be a crisis only if something is left precariously unresolved.

But what if the Supreme Court’s TRO on the impeachment trial is addressed not to the Senate sitting as the Impeachment Court but to the Senate as the upper chamber of the Congress of the Philippines?

And what if in their wisdom and patriotism the senators agreed to review their decision to accept the claimed-to-be flawed impeachment complaint and process? What if, Solomonically, the senators decide to take cognizance of our imagined High Court TRO—and agreed that it was sent to them as regular senators not as specially and constitutionally transformed Impeachment Justices? Then they would hold morning sessions (as they now hold their 11 a.m. caucuses) to dwell on the Supreme Court TRO, but in the afternoon, at 2 p.m., they would continue the impeachment trial, but skirting, for the moment, controversial issues such as the dollar accounts. Then there would be no constitutional crisis. This is something they have in fact done.

The Senate would in that way yield to the supremacy of the Supreme Court as the final interpreter of existing laws but at the same time continue being the sole power as an Impeachment Court whose proceedings cannot be stopped even by the Supreme Court.

The Senate, as the respondent in the TRO, would give its comment and reply to the High Court. But by going ahead with the impeachment trial it would also be reaffirming its constitutional supremacy over this impeachment case of the House of Representatives versus Chief Justice Renato C. Corona.

Supreme Court’s power of review
Two experts on constitutional law have challenged the view of some senator-judges that the Supreme Court has no authority over acts of the Impeachment Court. Both happen to be priests. Fr. Joaquin Bernas is the dean emeritus of the Ateneo Law School. He is among those who worked with fellow constitutional commissioners to create the present Constitution. The other expert is Fr. Rhanhilo Aquino, dean of the San Beda Graduate School of Law. They hold the opinion that even the Impeachment Court’s actions are subject to the Supreme Court’s constitutionally vested power to determine the final meaning of laws in case there is a conflict of interpretations.

In his keynote speech at the oath-taking of the Philippine Constitution Association’s new officers, Fr. Bernas last Wednesday discounted the notion of “superiority.” He said “only” the Constitution was superior. The Supreme Court was not superior to the Impeachment Court or any other government agency whose actions the SC had the power of review.

“Does the fact that the Constitution [name] the Senate as the sole judge of all impeachment cases make it [the Senate] superior to the Supreme Court in everything relating to impeachment? Perhaps we can find an answer to this by [reviewing] the jurisprudence on the relation of the Supreme Court to other agencies of the government,” Fr. Bernas urged.

He said that while the Constitution states that the electoral tribunals shall be the sole judge of all election protests, the Supreme Court was still called upon to determine if the electoral tribunals had committed grave abuse of discretion or acted without or beyond their jurisdiction.

Both Fr. Bernas and Fr. Aquino agree that the Supreme Court has the constitutional power to review any moves in the impeachment trial that might have been a grave abuse of discretion.

We can think of a scenario in which an impeachment court (not this Impeachment Court of the 15th Congress), in the senator-judges zeal to get an uncooperative witness to tell the truth, would order the use of Stalinist torture methods. To whom, if not the Supreme Court, would the offended party run for relief, redress and succor?

Military adventurism scenario
We dare bring this nightmarish scenario up because some commentators in mainstream media and in the social networks seem eager to see a constitutional crisis to ensue so that the Philippine military can exercise what they (these commentators) believe is the soldiery’s “constitutionally mandated” duty to serve as “protectors of the people.”

Indeed the Constitution’s “Declaration of Principles and State Policies” has this sentence in Principles, Section 3: “The Armed Forces of the Philippines is the protector of the people and the State.” Seldom quoted, however, are the sentences before and after that seeming invitation to the military to come to the fore whenever there is a crisis. The complete Section 3 reads: “Section 3. Civilian authority is, at all times, supreme over the military. The Armed Forces of the Philippines is the protector of the people and the State. Its goal is to secure the sovereignty of the State and the integrity of the national territory.”

If, God forbid, a crisis does ensue because the senator-judges decide to become an immovable object and the Supremes an irresistible force, the constitutional crisis could become the mess that we have experienced in both Edsa Uno and Edsa Dos, with the military egged on to do their thing and “be the protectors of the people and State.”

Goodwill has so far characterized the relationshp between the Impeachment Court and the Supreme Court. May nothing cause that goodwill to perish.