On 18 June 2021, the Supreme Court En Banc issued a Resolution dated 04 May 2021, approving the following amendments to the Internal Rules of the Supreme Court (IRSC).:
- Increasing the penalty threshold for administrative cases to be elevated to the Court En Banc, found in Rule 2, Section 3 (e), from suspension “for a period of more than one year or a fine exceeding forty thousand pesos” to suspension “for a period of more than two (2) years, or a fine in the total amount exceeding one hundred thousand pesos (PHP100,000.00);”
- Limiting the cases to be elevated to the Court En Banc which involve the lifting of judges’ or lawyers’ suspension found in Rule 2, Section 3 (f), to those cases only when the imposed periods of suspension are more than two (2) years;
- Shortening the period for distribution to the other Members of the Court of the Member-in-Charge’s report in a case prior to its scheduled Agenda date, found in Rule 13, Section (3) (c ) from “at least seven (7) days in advance’ to ‘at least three (3) working days prior to the scheduled Agenda date;”
- Changing of the permissible total period of continuances in the deliberation of cases, found in Rule 13, Section 4, from ‘shall not exceed three months’ to ‘shall not exceed the periods provided in Section 5 (b) of the IRSC; and
- Prescribing, in Rule 13, Section 5, a period of one (1) month within which to submit reflections, comments, or suggestions, and a period of two (2) weeks to resolve the case thereafter, unless further extension is allowed by the Court for compelling reasons only and upon the recommendation of the Member-in-Charge.
Chief Justice Gesmundo said in a speech he delivered before the Philippine Bar Association that “[t]he Supreme Court has embarked a case decongestion program and, toward this end, amended its Internal Rules in order to be able to comply with the constitutional mandate of two years for the resolution of cases.”