By: romero ragil (DISQUS)
Umali: "Stressing that impeachment proceedings are sui generis, he said “the rights to counsel are not established here,” unlike in a court trial. Under the [Rules of Procedure in Impeachment Proceedings of the House of Representatives], the lawyer cannot speak for the respondent,” he added.
As a first-year constitutional law student then at San Beda, Umali must have been absent when the subject of the supremacy of the constitution over statutes, legislative acts were being explained by his Constitutional law professor at the time, probably in 1980. Among the many professors at the San Beda College of Law that taught constitutional law was future SC Associate Justice Isagani Cruz, the father of the spokesperson of CJ Sereno. If Umali was around at that time, he could have known what Sereno is fighting for. Unfortunately, Umali did not last long in San Beda, probably because of its high standards for students taking up law that he finished his degree in MLQU, after probably seven years. The Bill of rights from which Sereno has drawn her justification to exercise her right to cross-examination is enshrined in the Constitution:
From Justice Cruz: “The Constitution is the basic and paramount law to which all other laws must conform and to which all persons, including the highest officials of the land, must defer. No act shall be valid, however nobly intentioned, if it conflicts with the Constitution. The Constitution must ever remain supreme. All must bow to the mandate of this law. Expediency must not be allowed to sap its strength nor greed for power debase its rectitude. Right or wrong, the Constitution must be upheld as long as it has not been changed by the sovereign people lest its disregard result in the usurpation of the majesty of the law by the pretenders to illegitimate power.” (Isagani A. Cruz, Philippine Political Law, Central Lawbook Publishing, Co., Inc. 1991 Ed., p. 11)
