The Supreme Court has penalized 21 judges while 94 court employees have been admonished, fined, reprimanded or had their benefits suspended after they were found guilty of various administrative offenses for the six months of this year.
Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin said excluded from the data are judges that have been preventively suspended while facing investigation.
A separate statistic from the Office of the Bar Confidant showed that 83 lawyers have been sanctioned through disbarment, suspension from practice of law, suspension from notarial practice or both, fined, reprimanded and admonished.
“We found these actions that we did were essential to obtaining confidence of the public in the Judiciary,” Bersamin told reporters.
“Statistics from the Office of the Court Administrator show from January to June of this year we fined, suspended, reprimanded or admonished 21 judges and 94 lower court employees were dismissed from the service, admonished, fined, reprimanded or had their benefits forfeited or suspended,” he said.
Bersamin, who was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte as the 28th Chief Justice of the high court last Nov. 28, 2018, last December promised to purge the courts of misfits and scalawags as part of his four-point agenda during his 11-month tenure as head of the judiciary.
The Chief Magistrate said that disciplining the ranks is one of his four-point agenda.
“The Court recognizes that having ethical and competent members of the Bench and the Bar is essential to the Rule of Law. Hence, it must instill discipline in the ranks of the judges, court personnel, and the legal profession, and purge the Judiciary of the corrupt, the misfits, and the scalawags,” he said.
The three other programs listed in his four-point agenda are the revision of the Rules of Court; Revised Law Student Practice Rule; and attending to the Infrastructure of the Judiciary.
