A proposed joint congressional commission on justice system reform drew both support and constitutional scrutiny at a Senate public hearing Wednesday, as lawmakers grappled with what one senator called a fundamental failure of institutions — not just individuals.
Senate Bill No. 1547, authored by Senator Francis Pangilinan, would establish a body bringing together members of both congressional chambers to directly address systemic weaknesses exposed by recent corruption cases. Pangilinan anchored his argument on what he described as the country’s biggest graft scandal to date, involving trillions of pesos in public money.
“The corruption scandal of 2025 is not just a crisis in corruption…It is really a crisis of the justice system,” Pangilinan said.
Pointing to the sluggish pace of accountability under current structures, the senator cited the 2004 Fertilizer Fund scam as a cautionary example — a case that took 21 years to reach a Sandiganbayan conviction. He argued that without structural reform, history would repeat itself regardless of who held power.
“If we don’t change our approach to the justice system and how it is run, we might as well just pick up a stone and hit ourselves on the head, because the result would be the same: we’ll just end up with a headache,” he said.
Former Associate Justice Adolfo Azcuna expressed support for the commission’s goals but flagged a potential constitutional obstacle. He pointed to Article VI, Section 13, which prohibits sitting members of Congress from concurrently holding any other government office.
“For me, there is a need to clarify the nature of this membership of senators and House members in this joint congressional commission, so it does not conflict with the constitutional provision prohibiting them from holding any other government office,” Azcuna explained.
He also urged proponents to account for existing reform bodies such as the Judicial Reform Initiative, and recommended seeking a formal comment from the Supreme Court before the bill advances further.
Pangilinan said the high court’s views would be taken seriously. “We respect the separation of powers and will submit to the final ruling of the Supreme Court, assuming this becomes law, and some issues are raised, but we would like to avoid that,” he said. “Because I’d like to think the Supreme Court is just as concerned with the state of justice in this country as we all are,” he added.
To counter doubts about the commission’s legal footing, Pangilinan drew a parallel to the Second Congressional Commission on Education — Edcom2 — a joint body created to confront a separate institutional crisis. “If there is an education crisis, then there is also a crisis in the justice system in our country,” he said.
The senator framed the bill as an attempt to force a harder conversation about institutional inertia. “Insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” he said, adding that the measure “provokes thinking” and “challenges us to shift paradigms.”
“If we are not going to delve deeper into this system of justice and figure out what we should do differently, then the massive corruption will remain unabated,” Pangilinan said.
