For legal research purposes, especially of analysts and advocates of law and justice reforms, I wish to summarize below the results of the 2004 to 2006 surveys of the Philippine justice system and legal profession conducted by the prestigious Social Weather Station (SWS).
In a 2004-2005 survey of the Philippine justice system conducted by SWS, involving 400 Filipino lawyers and 889 Filipino judges, the following salient findings were stated:
1. That 69% of Filipino lawyers were satisfied, and only 27% dissatisfied, with the general performance of trial judges in the
2. That the proportion of Filipino judges asserting that poor people could get justice under the Philippine judicial system was 75%, compared to 61% in the previous SWS referendum of judges conducted in 1995/96;
3. That, however, only 53% of Filipino lawyers agreed that the poor could get justice, compared to 50% of those surveyed by SWS in 1994/95;
4. That half of lawyers and more than two-thirds of judges said that the judiciary's intervention in economic decision-making was just appropriate, neither excessive nor insufficient;
5. That lawyers had very mixed feelings on judicial procedure in the Philippines, with 49% satisfied and 48% dissatisfied, which is essentially the same as in 1995, when 48% were satisfied and 51% were dissatisfied;
6. That 82% of judges in 2005, compared to 80% in 1996, were satisfied with judicial procedure;
7. That 63% of lawyers and 53% of judges were dissatisfied with the process of selecting appointees to the judiciary;
8. That large majorities of lawyers complained that courts operate too slowly, but larger majorities of judges said that courts proceeded at a reasonable if not speedy pace, and blamed lawyers for prolonging cases in order to get more income from appearance fees;
9. That two of every three lawyers, and one of every two (46%) judges say that court decisions were unpredictable (these perceptions were unchanged from 8-9 years ago);
10. That corruption remained a major problem of the Philippine justice system.
11. That As in 1995, one-fourth of lawyers surveyed in 2005 said Many/Very Many judges were corrupt;
12. That although half (49%) of the lawyers said they knew a case in their own city or province where a judge took a bribe, only 8% of such lawyers said they reported the bribery, the main excuse of those keeping silent being that they could not prove it;
13. That only 7% of the judges believed that Many/Very Many judges were corrupt;
14. That judges' perception of the extent of corruption among court personnel was the same as in 1996 and that what had increased was the proportion of judges seeing many lawyers as corrupt;
15. That among seven institutions whose performance was rated by both lawyers and judges, the Supreme Court scored the highest, while the Philippine National Police scored the lowest, and very unfavorably;
16. That the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA) got a very high rating, even higher than the Supreme Court, from judges, but was not included in the survey of lawyers;
17. That the Philippine Judges Association (PJA) satisfied most judges (net +30), but not most lawyers (net -2);
18. That satisfaction had risen with the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) and the Public Attorneys' Office (PAO), but had dropped with the Court of Appeals (CA);
19. That the National Prosecution Service (NPS) of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the PNP continued to be rated negatively, as before;
20. That it was widely agreed that court professionals and personnel were poorly paid - even worse than before, in the eyes of lawyers, but perhaps only as poorly as before, according to judges;
21. That judges who felt adequately compensated had risen slightly, from 17% in 1996 to 22% in 2004;
22. That it was also widely agreed that court facilities were poor;
23. That on the bright side, judges who called their court facilities adequate had doubled, from only 11% in 1996 to 23% in 2004;
24. That the access of judges to basic office equipment and legal reference materials paled in comparison with the access of lawyers to the same facilities in their offices;
25. That, asked about language to use in court proceedings, over three-fourths of both lawyers and judges disagreed with the idea of introducing the use of Filipino and local languages;
26. That job satisfaction continued to be high among both judges (42% Very Satisfied and 51% Satisfied) and lawyers (34% Very Satisfied and 59% Satisfied);
In a 2006 survey of the Philippine justice system, the SWS reported the following:
- That the proportion of Philippine judges feeling poorly paid had fallen steadily over the past ten years;
- That their physical security was an important concern, with the great majority saying they needed adequate life insurance and a personal firearm;
- That for the first time, judges said that the Continuous Trial System was working;
- That four out of five believed that court decisions were consistent, meaning they followed precedents;
- That judges cited increasing problems with the Rules of Court compared to two years ago;
- That fewer disagreed that the rules are too cumbersome, and that the rules encouraged corruption;
- That with many judges' positions having been vacated and re-filled, the new study showed quite a few as relatively new on the job: 22% have at most two years, and 43% have at most five years, of experience as judges;
- That male judges had a median eight years, and female judges have a median five years, of experience;
- That one-third of judges were responsible for two or more courts;
- That the median caseload was 300 cases per judge: 382 for RTC judges and 236 for the rest;
- That judges continued to stress the importance of proper training for their work, with 61% saying the Philippine Judicial Academy's pre-judicature program should be mandatory for appointment to the bench;
- That those wanting promotion to be based, to some extent, on attendance in training seminars was 64%, from 53% two years ago;
- That the proportion of judges who regarded their compensation as adequate rose significantly from 17% in 1995/96 to 22% in 2003/04, and then to 36% in 2005/06;
- That only 61% called their compensation inadequate, versus 81% a decade ago;
- That the fringe benefits that judges would most appreciate were health and hospitalization insurance and improved retirement benefits, which nine out of 10 called "very important";
- That they were particularly adamant that the policy of adjusting benefits for retired justices, whenever salaries of incumbent justices were increased, should also be applied to ordinary judges;
- That, on the new topic of physical security, the study found that 85% of judges needed but only 11% have adequate life/disability insurance;
- That 64% needed but only 16% had a personal firearm with license to carry;
- That 28% needed but only 4% have an armed bodyguard;
- That the percentage of judges disagreeing that the Rules of Court were too cumbersome decreased from 58% in 2003/2004 to 37% in 2005/06, due to an increase in the undecided from 3% in 2003/04 to 21% in 2005/06;
- That the most common reasons given for the Rules being cumbersome were:
21.1. They made unreasonable demands on the time and resources of judges;
21.2. They allowed dilatory tactics of lawyers; and
21.3. They became complex because of numerous circulars.
- That equally worrisome was the decline in the proportion who disagreed that the Rules of Court encouraged corruption, from 80-81% in 1995/96 and 2003/04 to 64% in 2005/06;
- That the Rules perceived as most conducive to corruption are on execution of judgment and provisional remedies;
- That among the judges that had a Court-Annexed Mediation (CAM) program in their area, two out of three were satisfied with the program and with the performance of the accredited mediators;
- That a clear tendency for satisfaction with
- That satisfaction among judges with the Barangay Justice System has risen significantly to 38% in 2005/06, compared to only 22% nine years ago;
- That the proportion of judges saying that the Continuous Trial System (CTS) worked had risen to a plurality of 43% from a minority 31% two years ago, and the proportion saying it does not work has fallen to a minority 35% now from a majority 60% before;
- That the problems most cited by judges about the CTS, whether they thought the system worked or not, was the unavailability of prosecutors (58%), lawyers and litigants (52%), and lawyers from the Public Attorney's Office (50%);
- That the problem of overclogging of court dockets (48%) directly related to judges' dissatisfaction with the system;
- That judges were asked if court decisions tend to follow precedents; SWS obtained ratings for consistency of 81% for the Supreme Court, 81% for the Regional Courts, 81% for the lower trial courts, and 72% for the Court of Appeals;
- That the proportions who said there were many/very many corrupt judges or justices were: 17% in reference to RTC judges, 14% in reference to MTC judges, 12% in reference to Court of Appeals justices, 4% in reference to Shari'a Court judges, 4% in reference to Sandiganbayan justices and 2% in reference to Supreme Court justices;
- That there was a relation between judges' appraisal of consistency in the decisions of various courts and their perceptions of corruption in those courts:
- That the higher their rating of consistency in decisions of a particular court level, the smaller was their estimate of the number of corrupt judges in that court level;
The new SWS study recommended that the Supreme Court institutionalize regular feedback mechanisms for not only trial judges but also for other judiciary personnel, so that all may be consulted on the situations, issues and challenges that they face.
In a 2005 survey on judicial appointments, the SWS reported:
- That a strong Knowledge of the Law was by far the public's top expectation of a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, having been cited by 63% of those asked in the survey;
- That the other most-cited criteria for a new Chief Justice were: second, Respect for Human Rights (37%), third, Sensitivity to the Needs of the Poor (32%), and fourth, Moral Character (30%);
- That Experience as a Supreme Court Justice, or the principle of seniority, was cited by 28%, making it only the fifth most important criterion according to the values of the general public;
- That Seniority was closely followed by the cluster of Sworn to Democracy (23%), Ability to Resist Pressure from Politicians (22%), and Sincerity in Fighting Corruption (22%);
- That much less important, from a list of ten criteria drawn up by SWS, were Sincerity in Fighting Crime (13%), and Ability to Cooperate with Other Branches of Government (7%);
On the matter of alternative law groups, which are nongovernmental organizations engaged in what is called “developmental” legal practice, the SWS cited as an outstanding example the organization BALAOD-Mindanaw (Balay Alternative Legal Advocates for Development in Mindanaw, Inc.), which assisted the Sumilao farmers—who walked more than 1,600 kilometers, all the way from Bukidnon to Manila, late last year (2007) —in obtaining their legal rights under agrarian reform.
Their lawyers from BALAOD (which is Visayan for “law”), who received little or no pay for their work, were no pushovers for the high-priced lawyers of their powerful adversary, San Miguel Farms, the SWS said.
The alternative law groups are concerned with human rights in general.
Legal education and research, legal policy reform advocacy, direct legal services, and test case litigation are major parts of their work.
Some, like BALAOD, focus on peasants, while others deal with migrant workers, indigenous peoples, people living with HIV/AIDS, the environment, and so forth.
Alternative Law Groups Inc. is a formal coalition of 18 alternative law groups.
In a 2008 survey of alternative law practitioners conducted by SWS, it found that 86 percent felt that substantive legal rights had improved, 73 percent said that services to avail of their legal rights had improved, and 67 percent said that procedures to access justice had improved, compared to five years ago. Some felt that these conditions were unchanged, but very few said they had worsened.
They attributed the improvement over time to new laws (e.g. the Juvenile Justice Act) and procedures, and to better support services, particularly from the Department of Social Welfare and Development and some local governments.
The ALG Inc. may be contracted at Room 215,
For more info about SWS, visit www.sws.org.ph or email mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.
