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Speech delivered by Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P. A. Sereno during the

75th Anniversary and Induction of New Members of the Women Lawyers’

Association of the Philippines (WLAP), Inc. on October 24, 2015 in the

Centennial Room, Manila Hotel

Friends, please take your seats. Thank you very much Atty. [Teresita

Ramirez] Sanchez. May I also acknowledge the presence of a very esteemed

guest today, Senator Victor San Andres Ziga, and of course the other

dignitaries at the presidential table.

But I am just so happy tonight to see our retired judges, may I request

you to please stand to be acknowledged — our retired judges, our incumbent

judges, one or some of whom might become justices soon — and esteemed

members of the legal profession, I thank you very much for allowing me to be

with you tonight.

At the outset, let me say that I feel very much the warm welcome

provided by the members and guests of the Women Lawyers’ Association of

the Philippines (WLAP). It speaks of the special camaraderie that women

lawyers have that transcend whatever differences they may have in

backgrounds, law schools, and even generations.

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To put the accomplishment of women lawyers in perspective, allow me

to quote the observation by a woman judge that it has actually been a little

more than a century in the long existence of humans on the planet that

women have been permitted to serve as lawyers and judges by societies. By

“permitted” means that heretofore, there have been many enclaves that were

formerly just reserved for men. But now the glass ceiling in this country has

been broken — the highest position in the field of law has been given to a

woman. And it is only therefore just that I acknowledge the tremendous effort

that went into paving the way for a woman to take this position.

It was basically Senator Tecla San Andres Ziga, whom I acknowledge

today, who has been instrumental for allowing me to be where I am now. Born

more than a century ago, she would have been 109 [years old] now. She was

among the five women lawyers who founded WLAP 75 years ago. She was its

first and its only two-time president. She initially served as such from 1940

and 1945 and again as president an incredible 25 years later from 1970-1972.

You can say that she considered WLAP very much like her child, the way that

she has been a mother to many.

We women lawyers owe a great debt to her for she was the one who

shattered the myth of male superiority in the matter of aptitude for law. She

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did this when she became the first woman law graduate to top the Philippine

Bar in 1930. She also served in the higher echelons of government, first as

congresswoman, and later as senator of the nation. She speaks from

experience when she wrote in an article for the Philippine Law Journal that the

thrust of women participation should not just be women’s liberation per se,

but the creation of greater opportunities to contribute more fully to national

development and not to be relegated to professions that are traditionally for

women-only profession, like social work, teaching, nursing, and the like.

I remember then, that at the time that I entered law school, women

were the minority. So I was one of a few women who topped their law school

classes at the UP [University of the Philippines]. But now when you look at the

population of UP, women dominate the men.

So we are now seeing something that Senator Tecla San Andres Ziga

started, and then we have to also acknowledge the efforts of Justice Cecilia

Muñoz Palma, who was the WLAP’s second president. So such an

accomplishment, I don’t know whether there’s an organization that can top

what WLAP has shown.

Justice Palma, your president from [19]45-49 also had a lot of firsts to

her name: first woman prosecutor, first woman judge of the Court of First

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Instance — the equivalent of today’s RTC [Regional Trial Court] — [and] first

woman justice of the Supreme Court. But there is also something very special

that she brought into her position. Not that she was a woman, but first and

foremost she was such a person of strong moral courage. And all of us

remember what she did, when she took principled stands even in a court that

was dominated by Marcos appointees. She wrote many stinging decisions that

[were] a rebuke to the authoritarian regime then. And even though people

would seem to think that publicly she would be a woman who would comport

herself with the stern stuff that justices [are usually] made of, many did not

know that she also had an impish sense of humor. She actually said during a

testimonial, given in her honor upon her assignment in the High Court, that

she was not just about to revolutionize the court by trying to womanize it. In

other words, if she is a woman, it is an accident that she is a woman, but

whether a male or a female, she imbued the court with such a strong sense of

moral courage, and one of the finest intellects that this country has ever

produced. So may I remind this audience what she said then.

Justice Palma is such a humble person that when you look at her words

in proportion to what she was able to accomplish historically, you would be

really amazed at how she considered her role. When she was speaking about

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her appointment to the Supreme Court, she simply added, “all that I hope to

achieve is to gain a foothold in that body for the women in our country” — and

indeed that foothold that she had in the 70s has now ripened into a woman

reaching the highest pinnacle of that body — in order that the Filipino woman

may sit side by side with the Filipino man in dispensing justice in the highest

court of the land which heretofore has been close to her.

So I have to acknowledge the fact that where it not for these two women

presidents of the WLAP, women lawyers will not be where they are now. And

your mother, Senator Ziga, is certainly really a rare kind to have trailblazed

that much.

Now, when they were showing the stuff that they were made of, they

showed such brilliance, courage, and grace that they were able to overcome

the gender bias in our society which otherwise would have limited them to the

home and hearth. It is thus desirable for women lawyers including our brave

women judges here, whom I acknowledge in this table, to organize — and

WLAP is one such organization — as historically they have not been in parity

with their male counterparts in some areas; although that is right now

changing in the judiciary. We just have a few percentage points to go before

finally, women judges will make up half of the judiciary.

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Increasingly, the number of appointments being made now of women in

the judiciary [is] indicating that the day when half of them will occupy judicial

positions is coming very very soon. But the work of women empowerment

and gender sensitization goes beyond mere numbers. I am not satisfied when

they simply say, “right now women have a small, fewer numbers less than the

men, but eventually we will have a half and half proportion.” I am not content

with that because empowerment is not about numbers. I think that that is

really a false way of analyzing our situation. I would rather focus on the

quality that women bring to the table.

When I spoke at the International Bar Association [IBA] Conference this

October in Vienna, Austria, where I was seated with the Chief Judge of the

State of Lagos of Nigeria in one panel on judicial corruption, I received a very

warm round of applause when I spoke about the fact that the survey

instruments — apparently that had been generated by the IBA — is wrong

because when it was asking the question of who are more vulnerable to

corruption, I was telling them, you should have made a distinction between

male judges and female judges. Now, it is not an indictment on the male

population, but I said that I have basically an impression — that goes round

and round, everywhere you can hear it repeated — that it appears that female

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judges are more impervious to attempted corruption. So congratulations to

the female judges for showing us the kind of reputation that many of them

possess and continue to propagate.

And so there is this quality that women bring to the discussion that

speaks about the kind of courage they are able to show and how it is very

evident to all that they intend to maintain that sense of integrity and

independence. Not only do they have integrity and independence, but I believe

that women judges are also some of the most competent in the judiciary

today.

So this is basically what I am trying to say, that when Justice Cecilia

Muñoz Palma was talking about women empowerment, she was talking about

the need to prove to everyone that women can be as competent and even

more competent than their male counterparts. And she said that such kind of

competence is necessary if we are to be equal partners to men in nation

building and if world development for the attainment of peace, which is the

goal of such partnership, will eventually be achieved. In other words, for us

women, it is not just enough that we are in parity with men; we should bring

the qualities of womanhood, the best kind to any workplace we are engaged

in. So that Justice Palma was saying that you have to be competent in order

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that people will believe in you. And for me, competence entails not only

striving to improve oneself, but also one’s environment, in our case, the legal

environment, the mainstay of which is the judiciary. My point is that as

women, and as lawyers, our cause of women empowerment and gender

sensitization is meaningless unless we are also advocates of judicial reform.

Let me now acquaint you with our judicial reform efforts, which I have

had previous occasion to speak about in my annual press conference. I am also

proud to say that the implementation of many of these reform efforts are

presently being led by women judges, some of whom are here in this table.

And to tell you that when I was appointed as Chief Justice, it was not just

meant to be a symbolic appointment. I think that what the intention was is

that the judiciary will experience a work ethic from its leader that will be

unparalleled so far. And I have committed to show that this woman leading

the Supreme Court will bring in a wave of reform and a wave of effort in the

judiciary that has never before been seen in our history.

So to convince you that the appointment of this Chief Justice has not just

led to such highlights in her evenings when she gets to dress up well and meet

very beautiful people like you, let me convince you now about the kind of

work ethic that is taking place in the judiciary by allowing you to walk through

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with me some of the most important reform programs that we are currently

having.

The first reform effort that was undertaken in the judiciary was the kind

of no nonsense management assessment and committee meetings that is now

taking place regularly. I have been told by Supreme Court insiders that it is

only the first time that a Chief Justice has convened all the heads of offices, not

only in the Supreme Court, not only in the Court Administrator’s offices, but

also in the three tertiary level courts, and spoke to them about the need to lay

down strategic plans and programs, and to carve out carefully crafted

objective decisions with timelines and measurable outcomes. So for the first

time right now, we are running the judiciary like we would any professional

organization. Remember that the judiciary is made up of roughly 30,000

strong people, with a budget of P25 billion. Any strong woman would see it as

the work of any professional CEO [Chief Executive Officer], that of ensuring

that there is full accountability for all the money that is entrusted to us by the

people and ensuring that we deliver justice as we publicly committed to do so.

There is no excuse for any inability to respond to our people’s need for justice.

Thus, in addition to an overhauling of the systems and processes inside the

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Supreme Court, we thought that it would be important for the people to see

how seriously we mean business.

In addition to trying to modernize our administrative human resources

with financial and logistic processes, we have already launched a Continuous

Trial Program, which is right now being piloted in 52 courts, that will try to

make our countrymen experience the process of having a trial continuously

held on a daily basis until it is finished completely. The intention is to bring

about the completion of the entire case to no more than two years and if

possible within six months for the simplest cases.

Now part of this requires of course automation and we have already

announced the fact that the Electronic Courts are already being rolled out in

some jurisdictions. Quezon City is already a fully-automated system. [In]

Makati [City] the cables and the trainings right now are being undertaken.

Angeles [City] is completely automated. In Cebu, you have Lapu-Lapu [City];

Davao [City] is also automated. And would you believe it, also Tacloban [City].

For the seven Tacloban Courts, if you had read the article in the [Philippine

Daily] Inquirer recently about it, it is building back better for the judiciary in

Tacloban. So you also have this being rolled out in [the cities of] Pasig,

Mandaluyong, and in Manila.

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Part of the Electronic Court System is an Automated Hearing System,

where for many of our courts right now, you already have a phenomenon

where right after the hearing, the order is immediately given and served on

the parties. So now the intention is to make you experience what it is [like] if

we will do away with the snail mail system. This is to be side by side with the

Electronic System, where upon a proper enrollment system, notices of

schedules and notices of even of some short orders will be given through the

e-mail [Electronic Mail] and the SMS [Short Message Service] mechanisms.

Eventually also, we have right now the E-subpoena, where police

witnesses are attending hearings on the basis of subpoenas that they are

receiving through e-mail. Now with respect to the E-subpoena System, the

Quezon City judges have reported a 97% rate of attendance by police

witnesses. As long as we can identify a system where we can employ

electronic means, we will do so.

So in the Automated Hearing System, which is part of the Electronic

System, you have already occasions where lawyers were taking selfies of

themselves together with the orders that they had just received from the

judge. We also had a phenomenon where in the first automated hearing

conducted in Davao City, the inmate was released immediately after it was

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found out that his case has already broken all the statutory deadlines. He was

released right there and then. And the impact of the immediate release was

such that the court employees together with the family of the released

detainee were crying because they found that justice could be indeed received

real time. So this is in fact after the revolutionary Judicial Affidavit Rule, which

had been rolled out also.

We also have the Quezon City practice guidelines in litigation. Now the

Court is discussing whether the Quezon City practice guidelines in litigation

which has more than halved the trial time for the cases in Quezon City will

eventually be rolled out first in the NCJR [National Capital Judicial Region] and

eventually nationwide.

We have the piloting of Rules 22 and 24 on the Rules of Civil Procedure

and we have the Decongestion Program that has been piloted in Quezon City

and is now going to cover 30% of total cases nationwide.

Now why am I going through a very fast litany of the reform efforts that

we have been pushing for in the judiciary? First, in Quezon City, the

decongestion program that was implemented in 14 months revealed a 30%

reduction rate in the caseload. Now just imagine the most congested courts all

over the country, you can just imagine that as we are able to bring down the

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cases of judges from the 2000 or 3000 or 4000 caseload that now they have to

as little as 500 because that is as dramatic as I see it now, we will eventually

have a system where trials will be on a continuous basis. And lawyers can

eventually look forward to the day when the average trial time will just take

no more than two years. So this is the future that we envision for the

Philippine judiciary, but it will need for us to be able to reduce the docket of

all our judges to no more than 300 per judge so that our judges can continue

their work-life balance that they so rightly deserve.

Now this is undergirded by a very ambitious Electronic Information

Systems platform costing P3.9 billion, in addition to the Electronic Court

System. The support for this has been fully pledged to us by the national

government because they saw the immediate fruits of our efforts.

So what we are doing here shows that any leader who is very serious in

her work and who, in this particular instance is a woman applying the

common sense that women so richly possess, can actually drive the justice

agenda much faster than we had ever imagined. This is not to try to give credit

to anyone, but it is just to emphasize to the women in this room that we all

know that given the chance we will actually do well. We know that given the

chance, we can show that we can do a lot of planning, a lot of coordination

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with people. We know how to engage everyone; we know how to make sure

that our stakeholders are with us in the process. But it is not for us that we are

doing it. I am sure that we all know that we are all doing this because we are

very mindful of the future that our children and grandchildren so rightfully

deserve. They deserve a future where our children can be proud of us, their

mothers, women judges, and women lawyers, for having paved the way for

justice to actually be realized in this country.

And so what am I saying here? One reason I am so confident about

speaking to you from this platform is because of what WLAP has done. If it had

not been for the sacrifice of the leaders of WLAP when it was first established

75 years ago, we would not have the right to be here now. So we are standing

on the shoulder of giants, our positions were built up by those who came

ahead of us. It is to them that this night should be dedicated. We should never

forget that at the time when they were multitasking, they did not have the

benefit of the computer, the smart phones, the tablets, where today’s women

could very well monitor their children from wherever they were.

Today’s women are much more mobile. They are more financially

affluent. They have the benefit of instant information from the internet. They

have all the help that can be given them in taking care of their health. But in

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the times of former Senator Tecla San Andres Ziga and the time of Justice

Cecilia Muñoz Palma, that was not their privilege. They were just being

sensible mothers, leaders and lawyers; and who believe that a woman’s

destiny is not to be confined merely to the home, but with whatever gifts that

the good Lord has given her, she has every right to have her equal place in

society, side by side with men.

But allow us also to dedicate this night to their other half, to the

husbands who allowed Senator Tecla San Andres Ziga, to allow Justice Cecilia

Muñoz Palma, and to all the other husbands, boyfriends, lovers, who allowed

women to have meaningful lives. And to all the families of women who chose

not to be attached to any one permanent partner in life, but have devoted

themselves; we know that these women cannot also have made it without the

backing of their family and their loved ones. We women can stand tall only

because others had been supporting us and had been rooting for us all the

way.

Now that we have broken the glass ceiling, only a very few glass ceilings

in the judiciary had been broken by women all over the world — we are less

than 10, I think only about seven — now that we have broken the glass ceiling

in the Philippines for women in the legal profession, we now try to look at

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how the other women in the other parts of the world are also doing. And

remember that there are many lessons that we can actually share to them. We

can actually tell them how we have been able to overcome the double burden

syndrome that can cripple so many women; how we have been able to

overcome bouts of depression and bouts of difficulties and loneliness that

some women go through whenever they go through very difficult physical

cycles.

Note that we have a lot that can be shared with the rest of the world.

And I was thinking that perhaps, younger women today are forgetting that

they would not be in this privileged position were it not for the sacrifices of

the women who came ahead of them. And I would lament if WLAP will find

itself lacking in fervent rosters of membership in the future. May the younger

women of today, may the younger women lawyers of the Philippines

recognize the great achievements that have been made by WLAP members.

Mabuhay po kayong lahat!