More lawyers call for besieged SC justice to resign

Supreme Court Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo's resignation was again sought, this time for plagiarism he allegedly committed in a ruling that permitted Ang Ladlad to participate as a party-list group in the May 10 elections. Del Castillo is still embroiled in a plagiarism controversy over his ruling on the Vinuya vs Executive Secretary case denying the appeals of "comfort women," or World War II sex slavery victims, for reparation and for an apology from Japan. In a motion for reconsideration filed on Monday seeking to reverse the high court's ruling on comfort women, the two lawyers for the former sex slaves said that the supposedly plagiarized portions in the Ang Ladlad vs Comelec ruling established a "pattern and practice of plagiarism" by Del Castillo. "The same pattern and practice of plagiarism seen in (the) Vinuya (decision) are found in Ang Ladlad — (which also has) Justice Del Castillo as Ponente (author) — with entire paragraphs lifted without attribution; in certain instances, sentences, words or phrases were intercalated; in others, discursive footnotes were represented as if the discussion in the footnotes were the ponente’s words when in fact these were lifted from unacknowledged sources," said lawyers Harry Roque and Romel Bagares. Thus, the court should then request Del Castillo "to resign from his post to save [the court] from further embarrassment." Click here and here to view matrices comparing the questionable portions with the original text allegedly copied by Justice del Castillo in his ponencia about the Ang Ladlad case without proper attribution. Del Castillo cleared Del Castillo's resignation was first sought by University of the Philippines law professors last August, a month after the plagiarism controversy broke. But last Oct. 12, 10 magistrates voted to absolve Del Castillo from accusations that he lifted more than 20 portions in the Vinuya ruling without proper attribution. A week later, the court ordered the 37 UP law faculty members to explain or "show cause" why they should not be disciplined for asking for Del Castillo's resignation. The court said the Code of Professional Responsibility for lawyers bars the airing in public of statements that tend to influence public opinion while a case is ongoing. The court's decision to exonerate Del Castillo and its issuance of the show cause order to UP law professors triggered an avalanche of criticism from the academe and legal circles, including prominent law professors overseas. Microsoft Word's fault? In clearing Del Castillo, the court said plagiarism was not committed because the magistrate and his researcher, who had helped him draft the decision, had no malicious intent when the attribution marks were deleted. The court also held that Del Castillo could not be accused of plagiarism because the word processing program used in writing the decision cannot detect "copied and pasted" material. "Microsoft Word program does not have a function that raises an alarm when original materials are cut up or pruned. The portions that remain simply blend in with the rest of the manuscript, adjusting the footnote number and removing any clue that what should stick together had just been severed," the SC said. Despite the admission of unattributed "copied and pasted" material, the Supreme Court did not apologize. Del Castillo and his researcher, identified by Newsbreak magazine as Michelle Ann Juan, have not been available for interviews since news of the first plagiarism allegations broke. Not Microsoft's fault In their motion for reconsideration filed Monday, the comfort women's lawyers said Del Castillo's alleged "pattern" of committing plagiarism just shows that it was not Microsoft Word's fault, but his. "With due respect, this demolishes the Microsoft Defense that has been deployed by this Honorable Court in its ruling to clear Justice Del Castillo, for it shows a certain deliberateness, pattern and habit in the way in which these omissions and intercalations have been committed by the Ponente," the two lawyers said. They likewise said that while Microsoft Word does not have the so-called function to raise an alarm, it has a "Track Changes" function to monitor changes made by the author. The lawyers then asked the high court to consider "inexcusable gross negligence" on Del Castillo's part for supposedly failing to supervise his legal researcher who helped him draft the decision and who herself admitted to accidentally deleting the attribution marks in the ruling on comfort women. - DM/KBK/HS, GMANews.TV