De La Salle University Student Government - Judiciary Department

The Judiciary shall be the sole body to be vested with judicial power. Judicial power includes the duty of the Judiciary to settle actual controversies involving rights that are legally demandable and enforceable and to determine whether or not there has been a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of any branch or instrumentality of the USG.

Magistrates are to undergo a rigorous one-year training before being considered for the position as part of the requirements of the USG's 2020 Constitution, USG-JD's 2021 Rules of Internal Governance, and the Judiciary Act of 2022. During this time, we learned about the laws and resolutions enacted by the Legislative Assembly, along with the available jurisprudences on previous cases. Accompanying the weekly masterclasses are the recitations, legal writing, and court simulation activities. By August 2022, I successfully completed the Magistrate Training Program, and then I was officially appointed as one the following month.

I worked along with eight other counsel officer trainees and two other magistrate trainees during my batch, and we worked on a moot court case as one of our final requirements. At this point, I wrote an eight-page resolution on a motion for reconsideration filed by two of the counsel officers, where the rest of the en banc concurred with the opinion. Moreover, I interpellated the counsel officers during the judicial examination for the moot court case. Finally, I also took part in writing the decision for the case.

During my tenure as an Associate Magistrate, I also served as the Chair of the Legal and Judicial Council, which entails that I am the one who oversees the training program of our counsel officer trainees and magistrate trainees for A.Y. 2022-2023. I drafted the training program's syllabus, provided the activity rubrics, wrote the rules of procedure per activity, corrected homework activities, built the virtual classroom, coordinated with all faculty members, and led the accomplishment of administrative tasks. A few of these administrative tasks include venue reservation and writing the pre-activity and post-activity requirements.

As part of the Executive Board of the branch, more known as the magistrates en banc, I frequently worked with our branch's administrative committees and the USG's Executive Board. At one point, I was also invited to become a lecturer on the USG Constitution to a group of SDFO student representative trainees. These are the students who represent complainants during discipline cases.

The most prominent event during my stint would be the case of Students of DLSU v. Commission on Mental Health and Well-being. I served as one of the en banc who heard and tried the case. As such, I also interpellated the Counsel Officers during their judicial examination in the trial hearing and aided in writing and promulgating the case decision.