EDITORIAL
Judicial review isn’t a power grab
The Supreme Court’s denial of the House of Representatives’ Motion for Reconsideration in the impeachment case involving Vice President Sara Duterte has revived the familiar charge that the judiciary is straying into political territory. One political commentator even warned that the ruling “opens the floodgates for judicial interference,” as though the Court had suddenly seized powers never intended for it. The claim is dramatic, but it collapses under scrutiny.
The Constitution does not carve out pockets of unreviewable authority for the political branches. It expressly empowers the judiciary to determine whether any branch has committed grave abuse of discretion. That safeguard was written into the 1987 Constitution for a reason: the country had already seen what happens when political actors operate without meaningful checks. Judicial review was strengthened, not weakened, to prevent a repeat of that history.
The Supreme Court has never behaved like an institution eager to police political disputes. Its record shows the opposite. It has intervened sparingly, cautiously, and only when constitutional boundaries were at risk of being ignored or distorted. The very fact that critics describe this ruling as a “floodgate” moment underscores how rarely the Court has exercised this power. Exceptional cases do not signal a pattern of judicial aggression.
Impeachment may be political in character, but it is not exempt from constitutional limits. When the Court steps in, it does not rewrite political outcomes. It ensures that the process follows the rules that bind everyone — including Congress. To insist that the judiciary must remain silent simply because elected officials are involved is to misunderstand the design of checks and balances. No branch is allowed to be the sole judge of its own excesses.
If anything, the Court’s long history shows a consistent preference for restraint. It has deferred to Congress on internal matters. It has given the Executive wide latitude in policy. It has often chosen stability over confrontation, even when doing so invited public frustration. To accuse it of wielding too much power because it acted in one constitutionally grounded instance is to ignore decades of jurisprudence marked by caution and modesty.
The greater danger lies not in a Court that occasionally asserts its constitutional duty, but in a political culture that expects the judiciary to look away whenever powerful actors overstep. A democracy cannot rely on political self-policing. The framers of the 1987 Constitution understood this, which is why they fortified judicial review as a necessary check, not an optional one.
A restrained Court strengthens democracy. A submissive Court weakens it. When constitutional boundaries are threatened, the judiciary must act — even if doing so displeases those who prefer a judiciary that stays quiet. That is not a power grab. That is the Constitution doing exactly what it was designed to do.