Justice Lourdes Sereno
Selecting a Supreme Court Justice is an important and delicate task. Many lawyers are undoubtedly up to the task. Of late they have come with impeccable academic credentials, advanced degrees, prior judicial experience, teaching experience (especially abroad), or a list of scholarly publications. With an increasingly homogeneous pool of nominees, the trick for the President is to determine who should be appointed. Is there something different about a candidate that stands out? Is there something in this mass of data that suggests how a potential Justice will conduct herself if appointed? There was perhaps one bit of information that could have caught the President Aquino's attention when he was examining the latest list submitted by the JBC. When Chief Justice Renato Corona was appointed Chief Justice towards the end of President Gloria Arroyo's term, there was a genuine issue as to whether the President was then covered by a constitutional ban against "midnight appointmen...