Will the Impeachment Judges Rise to the Occasion?

September 23 may become an important date in the history of Philippine impeachment.

On that day, the Senate impeachment court is scheduled to hear oral arguments from the prosecution and defense on a deceptively simple question:

How many votes are actually required to convict an impeached official? It sounds like simple math, but it’s not.

Article XI of the 1987 Constitution is titled “Accountability of Public Officers.” It begins with a simple declaration: public office is a public trust, and public officers must remain accountable to the people.

Then comes the machinery of impeachment.

The Senate has the sole power to try and decide impeachment cases. When sitting for that purpose, senators take an oath. And the Constitution provides that no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.

Notice that it does not say a fixed number. Just a fraction: two-thirds.

Presiding Officer Francis “Chiz” Escudero’s hard-16 ruling at the outset has made that interpretation the immediate battleground. The ruling requires 16 votes or two-thirds of the full 24-member Senate to convict.

The dispute arose because several senators are not participating in the trial, raising the question of whether they should remain part of the denominator.

The Senate then sought guidance from former Supreme Court magistrates. Retired Chief Justices Hilario Davide Jr., Artemio Panganiban and Reynato Puno presented views under which the required number could change depending on which senators are legally able to participate. Retired Associate Justice Adolfo Azcuna took the opposite position: the denominator remains all 24 senators because the Constitution says “all the Members of the Senate.”

Three against one does not decide a constitutional question. But it establishes something important: Sixteen is an interpretation but not a constitutional number.

Now consider the harder question. Suppose only fifteen senator-judges are legally able to participate. They hear the evidence. They deliberate. All fifteen vote to convict. Under a fixed sixteen-vote rule, conviction would still be impossible.

If you cannot participate in the adjudication, haven’t you forfeited your opportunity to render a judgment? And if you cannot render that judgment, should your involuntary absence nevertheless determine how many votes your colleagues need to render theirs?

This is not an argument for lowering the two-thirds requirement. It is an argument about who belongs in the two-thirds. The principle is simple:

The denominator should follow the constitutional capacity to exercise the function—not merely the number of names on the Senate roster. Otherwise, nonparticipation can acquire the practical effect of a negative vote. You cannot sit out the trial and still cast a shadow over the verdict.

And this is where Escudero’s role becomes impossible to ignore.

In 2025, Escudero moved the presentation of the Articles of Impeachment from June 2 to June 11, citing legislative priorities. On June 10, with him presiding, the impeachment court voted 18–5 to return the Articles to the House without terminating the case. The constitutional clock did what clocks do: It ran out. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the one-year constitutional bar prevented a new impeachment proceeding before February 6, 2026.

Now, in the second impeachment, Escudero’s hard-16 ruling has again placed a procedural question between the Senate and the merits of the case.

And on September 23, he will preside as the court confronts that ruling—and, according to the court spokesperson, participate in the vote as a senator-judge.

Escudero cannot single-handedly derail this impeachment trial twice. There is an irony here for Escudero.

The same office that gives him extraordinary influence over these proceedings also gives him an opportunity to restore public confidence—not by determining the outcome, but by allowing the constitutional question to be decided on its merits.

He cannot rewrite what happened in 2025. But he can decide what his role means in 2026. The larger question is precedent. A constitutional interpretation becomes precedent. And precedent becomes the road future institutions may travel. The framers of the constitution did not leave an immutable impeachment formula.

Under the 1935 Constitution, conviction required three-fourths of all the Members of the Senate. Under the 1973 Constitution, the National Assembly handled impeachment and conviction required two-thirds of all its members. The 1987 Constitution returned impeachment trials to the Senate and established a two-thirds requirement.

The fraction changed. The institution changed. But nowhere did the Constitution write 16.

That history does not settle today’s dispute. It does, however, remind us that constitutional numbers exist within constitutional structures.

And that responsibility ultimately rests with the senator-judges. We elect human beings, not constitutional machines. The Constitution cannot guarantee wisdom. It can demand judgment. It cannot guarantee courage. It can impose responsibility.

Voters choose the senators who may one day sit as senator-judges. The lesson is not whom to elect. That decision belongs to the voter.

The lesson is that the decision deserves thought because senators eventually leave office. The Constitution, however, remains.

Whatever interpretation emerges from this controversy may become the rule invoked when another impeachment trial arrives—perhaps under circumstances nobody now imagines.

That is why September 23 matters. The Senate will not simply be deciding how to count votes in one impeachment trial. It will be helping define the road future impeachment courts may follow.

The road less traveled becomes the precedent a young democracy inherits. A sound precedent should not merely settle today’s dispute. It should bring stability to tomorrow’s impeachment trials.

There may be no convenient answer. But convenience is not the standard. The task is to find a constitutional road sturdy enough for everyone to travel. Because this is not merely the trial of an impeached Vice President.

It is a test of whether the impeachment judges can summon enough courage and rise to the occasion.