The Supreme Court on ICC

Those who post stupidity in social media about the current debates on the ICC, please check your facts and know about what the Philippine Supreme Court declared about ICC jurisdiction.

- Atty. Josephus B. Jimenez

If I were the examiner in this year's Bar Exams in Political and Constitutional Law, I might ask the jugular legal questions resolved by the Supreme Court, en banc, in the case of Francis Pangilinan vs. Alan Peter Cayetano GR no 238875, decided on March 16, 2021 through the pen of Justice Marvic Leonen.

The case involved the withdrawal from the Rome Statute by then president Rodrigo Duterte after some cases were filed before the International Criminal Court for extra-judicial killings allegedly committed when Duterte was still Davao mayor. This is important because it educates us all on the Rome Statute and the ICC.

Pangilinan's petition was followed by a similar petition filed by the Philippine Coalition for the ICC and a third petition also filed by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. The three petitions were consolidated.

Leonen's decision started with three opening paragraphs: "Treaties may effectively implement the constitutional imperative to protect human rights and consider social justice in all phases of development, but so can a statute, as RA 9851, the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity, does."