Opinion: How Should We Interpret the Word 'All' ?

The controversy over the number of votes required to convict Vice President Sara Duterte in her impeachment trial has brought unusual attention to a seemingly simple word in the 1987 Constitution.

Article XI, Section 3(6) provides: “The Senate shall have the sole power to try and decide all cases of impeachment. When sitting for that purpose, the senators shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the Philippines is on trial, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shall preside but shall not vote. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the members of the Senate.”

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The contentious question is straightforward: How should we interpret the word “all” in the last sentence?

The starting point must be the rules of constitutional interpretation. We should be guided by the decision of the Supreme Court in Tuason vs. LTA:

“We look to the language of the document itself in our search for its meaning. We do not, of course, stop there, but that is where we begin. It is to be assumed that the words in which constitutional provisions are couched express the objective sought to be attained.”

Simply put, when interpreting the Constitution, we generally begin and, where possible, end with the text itself. This is the verba legis rule. If difficulty arises, we may look to the intent of the framers.

Surprisingly, according to former Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Jr., "There was no debate on this subject during the deliberations in both the 1973 Constitutional Convention and in the Constitutional Commission of 1986.” That avenue of interpretation may therefore offer little assistance.

Following the verba legis rule, the Presiding Officer, Senator Chiz Escudero, ruled on the first day of the impeachment trial that “all” means all 24 senators. Consequently, he declared that the conviction threshold is fixed at 16 votes (2/3 of 24).

He relied on Article VI, Section 2, which provides: “The Senate shall be composed of twenty-four Senators who shall be elected at large by the qualified voters of the Philippines, as may be provided by law.”

As a legal basis, the Presiding Officer cited the case of Bayan vs. Zamora, which ruled:

“Under these circumstances, the charter provides that the Senate shall be composed of twenty-four (24) Senators. Without a tinge of doubt, two-thirds (2/3) of this figure, or not less than sixteen (16) members, favorably acting on the proposal is an unquestionable compliance with the requisite number of votes mentioned in Section 21 of Article VII.”

It must be noted, however, that the Bayan decision concerns only the treaty-ratifying power of the Senate. Consequently, it should not automatically apply to other powers of the Senate such as ‘the sole power to try and decide all cases of impeachment.’

After more than 20 hearing days, Senator Erwin Tulfo initiated a reconsideration of the ruling. The impeachment court is now poised to deliberate on how “all” should be understood.

So, is there another constitutionally defensible way to interpret “all”?

For this, we must refer to the decision of the Supreme Court in Microsoft Corporation vs. Manansala, which ruled:

“Nothing is better settled than that courts are not to give words a meaning that would lead to absurd or unreasonable consequences."

Does the Presiding Officer’s interpretation of “all” produce an “absurd or unreasonable consequence”? On its face, yes.

Suppose nine senators, for whatever reason, do not participate in the impeachment trial. Only 15 senators would then be sitting as the impeachment court. If 16 votes are constitutionally required regardless of participation, conviction becomes automatically impossible.

All 15 participating senators could vote to convict, yet the result would still be acquittal because the required 16 votes had not been reached. This produces what is now called “acquittal by default.” The outcome would be based not on the votes actually cast by senators sitting as judges, but on the absence of senators who did not participate in the proceedings.

That is difficult to reconcile with the constitutional purpose of an impeachment trial and raises precisely the kind of absurd and unreasonable consequence contemplated in the Microsoft decision.

The distinction between the Senate’s treaty-ratifying power and its role as an impeachment court is important. Failure to obtain 16 votes for treaty ratification does not necessarily terminate the constitutional process; it may simply mean that the required approval can be obtained at a later time. In an impeachment trial, however, treating non-participation as effectively determinative of the outcome creates a fundamentally unconscionable consequence.

Nevertheless, the alternative way must still come from the Constitution itself. Notably, the Presiding Officer’s interpretation is flawed in that it derives the meaning of “all” primarily from a different constitutional provision. A more coherent approach is to read Article XI, Section 3(6) as a whole.

The word “all” cannot be divorced from the context in which it appears: an impeachment trial. Its meaning must therefore be determined from the provision where it is used, rather than automatically imported from another provision concerning the composition of the Senate.

This is particularly important because the provision itself establishes the conditions under which senators exercise their impeachment power. It states, "When sitting for that purpose, the Senators shall be on oath or affirmation.” That sentence must be read together with the final sentence: “No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.”

The continuity of thought underpinning the provision cannot simply be set aside. Indeed, the verba legis rule requires the text to be read in its entirety. The final sentence establishing the

the conviction threshold cannot properly be interpreted in isolation from the preceding language defining the senators’ status when they sit as an impeachment court.

Accordingly, “all” logically refers to those senators who have taken the required oath or affirmation to sit as judges in the impeachment trial. Only senators who have assumed that constitutional role should be counted in determining the two-thirds threshold. Two-thirds of that number would then constitute the required vote for conviction.

This interpretation, however, does not eliminate the possibility that senators could deliberately absent themselves to manufacture an “acquittal by default.” That remains a serious institutional vulnerability. Indeed, it would be a tragic indictment of the quality of our Senate if the solemn oath of a senator could be treated as something less than a binding commitment to perform a constitutional duty.

The larger point, however, is that constitutional interpretation must not be driven by political objectives. Whether the consequences favor conviction or acquittal should not determine the meaning of the Constitution. The text must come first.

We must therefore internalize the proper way of reading our Constitution: begin with its words, read those words in their full context, and apply the verba legis rule without a partisan agenda.

Ultimately, we should take to heart the admonition in Tuason: “As the Constitution is not primarily a lawyer's document, it being essential for the rule of law to obtain that it should ever be present in the people's consciousness…”

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