ONE of the more disappointing spectacles in the ongoing impeachment proceedings has not been the legal arguments themselves but the manner in which they have been presented. Instead of treating constitutional interpretation as reasoned deliberation, some senators have turned it into political theater. The most conspicuous have been Senators Alan Peter Cayetano and Pia Cayetano, who advance a position far more contestable than they let on.
The issue is straightforward. May the impeachment court elect a presiding officer other than the Senate president when the respondent is not the president? My answer is yes, not because the Constitution says so, but because it does not prohibit it, and because it expressly vests in the Senate the sole power to try and decide impeachment cases and to promulgate its rules.
Ironically, I do not arrive at this conclusion because I favor Senate President Francis Escudero. In fact, I have publicly expressed reservations about his stewardship of the proceedings. If I had my way, I would rather see Sen. Francis Pangilinan preside. His legal acumen, judicial temperament and institutional credibility would inspire greater public confidence.
But constitutional interpretation cannot depend on personalities.
That is why I found Sen. Pia Cayetano’s presentation troubling. She marshaled jurisprudence and printed copies of the 1986 Constitutional Commission deliberations to show that the framers intended the Senate president to preside whenever the impeached official is not the president. The performance was persuasive, yet it implied that the issue had already been conclusively settled.
It has not.
What was missing was an equally important body of doctrine repeatedly articulated by the Supreme Court. While the court has consulted the deliberations of the Constitutional Commission, it has consistently held that these debates are merely persuasive aids. They do not control the constitutional text, and cannot create powers, limitations or prohibitions the Constitution itself does not express.
This is hardly an obscure principle. In Civil Liberties Union v. Executive Secretary (GR 83896 and 83815, Feb. 22, 1991), the court recognized the usefulness of the Constitutional Commission records but held that they “are powerless to vary the terms of the Constitution when the meaning is clear.” In Francisco Jr. v. House of Representatives (GR 160261, Nov. 10, 2003), the landmark impeachment case, it laid down the canons of construction, beginning with verba legis that words are given their ordinary meaning. And in Lambino v. Comelec (GR 174153, Oct. 25, 2006), it held that where the language of the Constitution is clear, courts do not deviate from it, for “it is safer to construe the Constitution from what appears upon its face.” To be candid, these three cases did not treat the framers’ debates as surplusage. Each also consulted their intent as a genuine interpretive tool. But that is the point: The debates illuminate the text, never override it or manufacture a limitation the Constitution does not express. Long before them, J.M. Tuason & Co. v. Land Tenure Administration (GR L-21064, Feb. 18, 1970) had established that where constitutional language is clear, “the need for construction is reduced to a minimum.”
These are not peripheral decisions. They represent a well-established jurisprudential approach to constitutional interpretation.
This is precisely why I take issue with how the argument was presented. The impression given was that citing the framers’ debates ends the discussion. It does not. Those debates matter only when the text is genuinely ambiguous. They possess no constitutional force. The Constitution that governs us is the one ratified by the people, not the transcripts of its commissioners.
The irony is striking. Those invoking the framers’ intent are asking us to diminish an express constitutional grant of authority by relying on materials the court itself has repeatedly called merely persuasive.
The Constitution provides that the Senate shall have the sole power to try and decide all cases of impeachment. It requires the chief justice to preside only when the president is on trial. Beyond that, it is silent. Silence should not be transformed into prohibition, especially where doing so diminishes powers expressly vested in a constitutional body.
Had the framers wished to bar the Senate from electing another presiding officer in all other impeachment trials, they knew perfectly well how to write such a restriction into the Constitution. They did not.
This is why I find the grandstanding of the Cayetanos unnecessary. Constitutional arguments should persuade because of their reasoning, not because they are delivered with theatrical confidence or stacks of printed materials. A senator distributing copies of Constitutional Commission debates may create compelling optics, but optics are not constitutional law.
Equally disturbing was the suggestion that those who disagree simply do not understand the law. I am not a lawyer and claim no expertise equal to the bar. But constitutional interpretation is not a privilege reserved for lawyers. The Constitution belongs to every Filipino, to academics, judges, legislators and ordinary citizens alike, if their arguments are grounded in reason and fidelity to the text.
Constitutional debates in democratic societies should not be confined to courtrooms. They should unfold in universities, legislatures and newspapers, among citizens who recognize that constitutional government depends not only on lawyers but on an informed public.
The Senate sits as an impeachment court, not as a classroom where senators lecture one another, or the public, on what to accept as constitutional truth. Humility should accompany interpretation, for even the Supreme Court has acknowledged that reasonable disagreement exists.
The Cayetano siblings are entitled to their interpretation and to argue passionately for it. What they are not entitled to do is leave the public with the impression that theirs is the superior and only constitutionally respectable position, while overlooking the settled jurisprudence that places the Constitution’s text above the debates of its framers.
Constitutional fidelity requires something more demanding than confidence and arrogance. It requires intellectual honesty and humility, presenting not only the authorities that support one’s position but also the doctrines that complicate it. That is how constitutional democracies mature, and how public trust is earned.
The Constitution deserves better than two grandstanding senators.
The author is a professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and vice chairman of the board of the state-run PTVNI.