Retired Chief Justice Reynato Puno said the Senate, as the Impeachment Court, has the power to interpret the “meaning and nuances” of the provision in the Constitution stating that no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the members of the Senate.
Puno said this power comes from Article 11, Section 3(6) of the 1987 Constitution, which provides that the Senate has the “sole power to try and decide all cases involving impeachment.”
“Please note the use of the word ‘sole,’ which means the only body that can try and decide all cases involving impeachment. The sole power to try and decide necessarily includes the lesser power to promulgate the rules that will govern the trial and decision of impeachment cases,” he said.
He said the power granted to the Senate Impeachment Court by the Constitution is judicial power.
The Impeachment Court is not under the Supreme Court, he said.
“In discharging this judicial power, the Senate Impeachment Court is not under the Supreme Court. The senator-judges are not like the judges of the regular courts of law who are all under the supervision of the Supreme Court,” he said.
There is no provision stating that the Supreme Court can review how the Senate should conduct its trial, he said.
“In general, Your Honors, all these questions are to be resolved alone by the Senate Impeachment Court because it is the sole judge to try and decide impeachment cases,” he said.
He said the Senate’s decisions on these matters are political questions left to the wisdom of the senator-judges.
He noted that internal rules of the Impeachment Court are not subject to the review of the Supreme Court.
This is precisely because they are independent of the Supreme Court.
But Puno also said not all actions of the Impeachment Court are political in character, and these actions may be reviewed by the Supreme Court and struck down as unconstitutional.
The retired magistrate is one of the amici curiae of the Impeachment Court on the issue of determining the threshold for the impeachment vote.