Case Digest (G.R. No. 42780) Core Legal Reasoning Model
Core Legal Reasoning Model
Facts:
In A.M. No. 10-7-17-SC, petitioners Isabelita C. Vinuya and several members of the Malaya Lolas Organization filed administrative charges against Associate Justice Mariano C. del Castillo before the Supreme Court en banc for alleged plagiarism, twisting of cited materials, and gross neglect in the decision he penned for the Court in Vinuya v. Romulo, G.R. No. 162230, promulgated on April 28, 2010. They claimed that Justice Del Castillo had lifted passages from three foreign legal scholars’ works—Evan Criddle & Evan Fox-Decent (Yale J. Int’l L. 2009), Mark Ellis (Case W. Res. J. Int’l L. 2006–2007), and Christian Tams (Cambridge Univ. Press 2005)—without proper attribution and had “twisted” their meanings to support his conclusions. The charges were first dismissed by the Court on October 12, 2010 for lack of evidence of malicious intent, on the ground that inadvertent deletions during draft cleanup had removed the attributions. The petitioners moved for reconsideration, urging t Case Digest (G.R. No. 42780) Expanded Legal Reasoning Model
Expanded Legal Reasoning Model
Facts:
- Parties and Allegations
- Petitioners: Isabelita C. Vinuya and other members of the Malaya Lolas Organization.
- Charged Associate Justice Mariano C. Del Castillo with:
- Plagiarism (failure to attribute lifted passages from foreign authors).
- Twisting of cited materials.
- Gross neglect of duty.
- Respondent: Justice Mariano C. Del Castillo, author of the Supreme Court decision in Vinuya v. Romulo (G.R. No. 162230).
- Procedural History
- April 28, 2010 – Vinuya decision promulgated by Supreme Court dismissing petitioners’ claims on the merits.
- July 19, 2010 – Petitioners filed a Supplemental Motion for Reconsideration raising plagiarism issues.
- July 27, 2010 – Letter from Justice Del Castillo referred to the Court’s Ethics and Ethical Standards Committee.
- Ethics Committee Investigation
- Collected evidence, heard petitioners and respondent, reviewed drafts.
- Determined omissions of citations were accidental deletions by researcher.
- Recommended denial of the motion for reconsideration.
- October 12, 2010 – Supreme Court en banc dismissed the plagiarism charges against Justice Del Castillo.
- January–February 2011 – Petitioners’ motion for reconsideration of the October 12 decision was denied.
- Key Facts Found by Ethics Committee
- Initial drafts contained proper attributions to three foreign authors (Criddle & Fox-Decent, Tams, Ellis).
- Court‐employed researcher inadvertently deleted citations during final clean-up.
- Remaining citations in the decision still showed that lifted material was not Del Castillo’s own.
- No evidence of malicious intent or deliberate misrepresentation.
Issues:
- Did Justice Del Castillo commit plagiarism by failing to attribute certain passages in his Vinuya decision?
- Does judicial writing require the same attribution standards as academic scholarship?
- Is malice or deliberate intent a necessary element of judicial plagiarism?
Ruling:
- (Subscriber-Only)
Ratio:
- (Subscriber-Only)
Doctrine:
- (Subscriber-Only)