Supreme Court News

SC News
The Chief Justice presided over SC en banc session. Upon her instructions, the agenda included the decentralization of the Court’s administrative functions with respect to the lower courts, in order to include all inputs. The members of the Court are of one mind on the merits of decentralization, and have agreed on measures to ensure its effective and deliberate implementation, including the creation of a committee headed by Associate Justice Jose Portugal Perez to conduct a needs assessment of decentralization.  Justice Perez was formerly a Court Administrator before he joined the High Tribunal.

Likewise, for the first time in recent history, the Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the Philippines will engage in a peer-to-peer exchange with their counterparts in the United States of America.
On 14 December 2012, Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P.A. Sereno, and Associate Justices Presbitero J. Velasco, Jr., Mariano C. del Castillo, and Estela M. Perlas-Bernabe will meet with Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and the Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., to discuss, among others, maintaining judicial stability in a rapidly changing environment.
Chief Justice Sereno has likewise been invited by the World Bank, headquartered in the U.S. capital, to deliver the keynote address on Access to Justice and Social Inclusion, in celebration of the Law, Justice and Development Week 2012.  She will be speaking on “The Cost of Injustice.”
Other activities scheduled during the four-day official visit include a meeting with United States Attorney General Eric H. Holder, knowledge sharing with the Federal Judicial Center and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and a forum on Philippine Judicial Reform sponsored by the U.S.-Philippines Society.