New lady Supreme Court justice at age 50

I do not have personal knowledge about the background of the newly appointed Supreme Court Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Aranal-Sereno. Many project that she may well become the country’s first female Chief Justice.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who hailed President Noynoy Aquino for choosing Sereno, described the new Justice as “brilliant.” The worst endorser a public servant can ever have is Sen. Santiago, knowing her politics of “butterflyism”, marked by the acts of jumping from one political fence to another, from one principle to another, and from one ideology to another.

Sereno, nicknamed “Meilou,” is only 50 and could serve the Supreme Court for another 20 years before she reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70, according to news reports. She is the youngest Supreme Court magistrate after Justice Cesar Bengzon who was 48 when he was appointed in 1945, reports added. It is said that Sereno is an expert in international trade law.

Sen. Santiago said Sereno was “one of the leading authorities in the Asian region on international trade law.” Both graduated with honors from the University of the Philippines College of Law and both earned their post-graduate degrees in law from the University of Michigan in the United States, according to reports.

It was also claimed that Sereno was instrumental in the government’s winning the multi-million-dollar Piatco case. The consortium that built the terminal, the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. (Piatco), sought international arbitration after the government voided its contract in 2002 for being illegal, which the Supreme Court upheld in 2004. Piatco’s German-based principal investor, Frankfurt Airport Services (Fraport), filed suit at the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington D.C. to recover its $425 billion investment. Piatco brought a separate case for compensation to the Singapore-based International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration Tribunal.

Actually, Sereno was part of the legal team headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Florentino Feliciano that won both cases for the government. The Fraport case was dismissed in 2007 and the Piatco case only last month. Aside from her connections with the UP law faculty, Sereno was the head of the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center. Sereno is married to Jose Mario Sereno, executive director of the Association of Petrochemical Manufacturers of the Philippines. The couple has two grown children.

Well, there is only one thing I can say, that is, in the midst of the media praises for Sereno, the real test would be her actual performance and attitudes in the next 20 years as a jurist. Let us give her the chance to show her best. But let us not be hypnotized by routine academic credentials alone --- worst of all, by acclamations from partisan politicians whose livelihood depends on their visibility in the press.


See:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100815-286854/Sereno-Triumph-of-intellect-over-shabby-politics