PHL courts urged to examine impact of social media

How is the Philippine judicial system, bounded by rigid laws, coping in the Facebook and Twitter era? This was the question posed by Chief Justice Robert J. Torres Jr. of the Supreme Court of Guam as he stressed the challenges posed by the social media revolution to judicial ethics and court-media relations in his lecture delivered recently as part of the Chief Justice Renato C. Corona Distinguished Lecture Series. Torres spoke on “Media and the Courts" before a full-house crowd which included his Philippine counterpart, Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, and other jurists, law practitioners, and developmental aid partners at the Supreme Court Hall in Padre Faura in Manila. The 51 year-old chief justice related how the social media revolution, where the method of accessing information has been transformed by the 24-hour Internet and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, has impacted on the judiciary. For instance, he cited the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee’s prohibition against judges adding lawyers who appear before them as “friends" in social networking sites. On the flip side, he also mentioned how social networking sites can be used to improve accessibility to court information such as in the case of the Tennessee court system which has 900 followers on Twitter. Through it all, Torres highlighted the responsibility or obligation of the court’s representative “to reach out and interact with all aspects of the community to enhance and reinforce the public perception of and trust in the system of justice." Composing the panel of reactors to Torres’ lecture were Supreme Court public information office (PIO) chief court administrator Jose Midas P. Marquez and journalist Jose Manuel “Babe" Romualdez. The event was held under the auspices of the Supreme Court, the PHILJA, and the SC Program Management Office. — GMANews.TV