Aquino names AIM executive new Supreme Court justice

(Updated 7:06 pm) Malacañang on Friday named Asian Institute of Management Policy Center executive director Ma. Lourdes Aranal-Sereno as the latest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda made the announcement at a press briefing. Sereno will occupy the post vacated by Renato Corona when former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appointed him Chief Justice on May 17. Her appointment — the first Aquino made to the Supreme Court — completes the 15-member bench. Sereno took up law at the University of the Philippines College of Law, where she graduated cum laude and class valedictorian in 1984. She obtained her Master of Laws degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1993. Lacierda said Aquino choose Sereno based on the list submitted by the Judicial and Bar Council and does not know Sereno on a personal basis, although Aquino and Sereno were one batch apart at the Ateneo de Manila University where they both took the same undergraduate course, AB Economics. "The names were submitted to him based on the Judicial and Bar Council practice of giving names to the president, and from there all the names were vetted by the president," said Lacierda. Sereno graduated from the Ateneo with a degree in AB Economics in 1980, while Aquino graduated from the same course in 1981. Both were born in 1960. Sereno has been a faculty member of the Philippine Judicial Academy since 2000 and has taught civil law, negotiable instruments law, and international trade law. She was also a member of the faculty at the Hague Academy of International Law in Cambodia in November 2004. Lacierda said Sereno's credentials were "admirable." The Palace spokesman said she was one of the lawyers who briefed the Aquino government on the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. (Piatco) case before the International Chamber of Commerce-International Court of Arbitration in Singapore. The Philippines won the case with her as co-counsel. Other JBC nominees who were considered for the position were former UP law dean Raul Pangalangan; Court of Appeals Associate Justices Noel Tijam, Hakim Abdulwahid, and Japar Dimaampao; and Commission on Elections Commissioner Rene Sarmiento.— Jam L. Sisante/JV, GMANews.TV