The Philippine Judiciary

Hon. Reynato S. Puno Chief Justice

For many, justice crawls at a pace that does little to inspire confidence in our system of justice and rule of law.

There are several causes for the clogging of our arteries of justice. Certainly, a primary cause is lack of
resources. The Judiciary receives 0.88% of the national budget, a pittance compared to the budgets of the other two great branches of our government. The result of this financial pinch, among others, is lack of courtrooms and a lack of judges. the disturbing statistics show thirty percent of judicial positions are vacant, while some 712,991 cases remain pending in our lower courts. We thus have the pathetic sight of an undermanned judiciary run by judges bent and burdened by overloaded dockets. To be sure, money alone is not the magic bullet that will obliterate the problems in the disposition of our cases. The problems are many but they are not beyond solutions. For instance, we can explore means to expedite the disposition of our cases thru revisions of some of the effete provisions of the Rules of Court, or by encouraging the resolution of conflicts thru methods like alternative dispute resolution. The Court can also update itself with advances in technology so that computers and the internet may be exploited to make the wheels of justice run faster. But over and above all, we should all work together to improve the delivery of justice to our people. Nobody has without a role to play to realize this noble objective. The edifice of justice can only be built by the joint labors of the lowly employees and the intellect of the elite. Let me emphasize too that the dispensation of justice has no final chapter. It is a conntinuing endeavor where patience is a key factor.

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