Behind the robes: Getting to know the Chief Justice contenders

Dimaampao, Marquez, Leonen, Zalameda, Caguioa

MANILA – Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo will hang up his robe upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70 on Nov. 6.

He served in the Supreme Court (SC) for nearly a decade, including five years as the primus inter pares (first among equals) among the “gods of Padre Faura,” which is how the justices at Manila’s high court are called.

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Under the Constitution, the President must appoint a new chief justice within 90 days from the occurrence of the vacancy.

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READ: Marcos faces crucial choice: 5 shortlisted as next SC chief justice

The shortlist of five names screened by the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) was transmitted to Malacañang last week — Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, and Associate Justices Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, Rodil Zalameda, Japar Dimaampao and Jose Midas Marquez.

This will also mark President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s first time picking the top magistrate.

Two other senior magistrates, Associate Justices Henri Jean Paul Inting and Ramon Paul Hernando, withdrew the acceptance of their nominations.

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Education

Three of the five, namely Caguioa, Zalameda and Marquez, studied at the Ateneo de Manila Law School, with Zalameda earning his pre-law Political Science degree at the University of the East (UE).

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Leonen earned both his undergraduate degrees in Economics, magna cum laude, and law degree from the University of the Philippines (Diliman, Quezon City).

Dimaampao, the second Muslim appointed to the high court after Associate Justice Abdulwahid Bidin, earned both his pre-law (Business Administration) and law degrees from UE.

Appointments

Leonen was appointed associate justice in 2012 by the late President Benigno Aquino III and is one of the youngest appointees to the position at 49 years at the time.

Caguioa was also appointed in 2016 by Aquino, his Ateneo Grade School classmate, and under whom he served in other positions — as acting Justice secretary replacing Leila de Lima and chief presidential legal counsel — before joining the high court.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte, meanwhile, appointed Zalameda in 2019, as well as Dimaampao and Marquez in 2021.

Jose Midas Marquez

Marquez, 60, is the youngest of the five candidates; Leonen, Zalameda and Dimaampao are 63; and Caguioa is 67.

Despite being the youngest, Marquez arguably has the longest exposure to institutional memory of the SC, having served the longest term as court administrator from 2009 to his appointment as associate justice in 2021.

READ: Retired SC magistrate nominates Midas Marquez as chief justice

When he retired in 2019, then chief justice Lucas Bersamin noted that Marquez should have long been appointed associate justice, noting his long service as court administrator.

Marquez had been court administrator and court spokesperson during the SC’s most trying times, particularly the impeachment of the late chief justice Renato Corona.

He also personally handled the administrative and security concerns of Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221 Judge Jocelyn Solis Reyes, who handled the November 2009 Maguindanao massacre case.

The trial resulted in multiple convictions in December 2019, including masterminds Datu Andal Ampatuan Jr. and Zaldy Ampatuan who were convicted of 57 counts of murder.

Rodil Zalameda

Unlike Marquez and Dimaampao who were previously bypassed multiple times in their applications for SC associate justice, Zalameda applied one time before he was named by Duterte to the high court.

A product of the country’s public school system, he was a prosecutor and a Court of Appeals (CA) justice at the time of his appointment to the SC.

Like Corona, Gesmundo and Caguioa, Zalameda is a member of the highly regarded fraternal order of Utopia based at the Ateneo School of Law.

Notably, another Utopia member, retired associate justice Arturo Brion, along with the Association of Retired Regional Trial Court Judges of the Philippines, endorsed Marquez for the chief justice post.

Japar Dimaampao

Like Caguioa and Zalameda, Dimaampao had extensive experience as a prosecutor and magistrate. He also had one of the longest tenures as a CA justice before his appointment to the SC in 2021.

Dimaampao, who hails from Marawi City, is also a certified public accountant and an acknowledged expert in commercial laws and taxation, having authored a number of books on the subject.

Marvic Leonen

The sole position of senior associate justice in the SC is held by the longest serving magistrate in the court. In this case, Leonen, who was appointed in 2012, acts as chief justice when the top magistrate is on leave.

Leonen has played a key role in bringing the high court to the age of digital artificial intelligence.

READ: Former VP Leni nominates Senior Justice Leonen as next chief justice

He has repeatedly pointed out that automated digitalization cannot replace human intelligence and independent judgment in rendering court rulings, which must remain purely at the discretion of humans.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Leonen was the chair of the first computerized and localized Bar Examinations in 2022, allowing aspiring lawyers to use their own laptop computers at multiple testing sites as opposed to a single site in Manila in previous years.

Leonen penned the recent contentious decision on unprogrammed appropriations in the 2024, 2025 and 2026 national budgets. The Office of the Solicitor General appealed the ruling.

Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa

The oldest on the list, Caguioa also has the distinction of serving as acting justice secretary. He was also part of the delegation to the Permanent Court of Arbitration for the South China Sea arbitration.

In 2019 at the height of the Duterte administration’s war on drugs, Caguioa wrote decisions reiterating an accused’s rights, saying in one case where there had been no witnesses, trampling on people’s rights on the pretext of a war on illegal drugs is actually a war on people (People v. Narvas).

In another case (People vs. Sapla), Caguioa criticized the warrantless arrest of a man by police acting on an anonymous tip.

Caguioa also voted to dismiss the petition of Senator Ronald Dela Rosa challenging the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for the thousands of deaths during his term as national police chief of the Duterte presidency.

Caguioa, in his concurring opinion, stressed that Dela Rosa faces charges as a mass murderer and that the SC’s actions should not result in the coddling of those in power, should not allow impunity to continue, as it is, in fact, the last stronghold for the protection of rights for those without it.

READ: JBC invites 5 SC senior justices to apply for chief justice

He said the Court “should strongly guard against being used as a politically convenient doormat, for the wiping clean of those who are charged with blood on their hands.”

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Caguioa did not apply to be chief justice when Diosdado Peralta retired in 2021 during the Duterte presidency. /dp