Pre-Semester Frontier 31
If one is unqualified, no amount of legal acrobatics can change that
At the heart of the power to appoint, if it is provided, is the doctrine of qualified appointnent. It’s in one of the most beautiful decisions ever rendered by the Supreme Court, when it said “we cannot afford to become a nation of square pegs in round holes.”
Fortunately, the matter of qualification is not a subjective thing. It is not discretionary. If there is a set of objective/ empirical criteria in the law, it has to be followed. If an applicant fails the criteria, no amount of legal acrobatics can permit the appointer to bypass the criteria.
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”