July 26, 2014

In Re: Plagiarism Charges Against Justice Mariano Del Castillo

(February 8, 2011)

FACTS:
Petitioners Isabelita C. Vinuya, et al., all the members of the Malaya Lolas Organization were denied of
their motion for reconsideration for lack of merit in the Per Curiam Resolution promulgated on February
8, 2011 against Justice Mariano Del Castillo regarding his alleged plagiarism, twisting of cited materials,
and gross neglect in his decision for the Court in G.R. No. 162230, entitled Vinuya v. Romulo.Purportedly
in the said cases ponente, Justice Mariano Del Castillo copied from three foreign authors without
acknowledging them in his decision in the Vinuya V. Romulo case, hence his overt act of plagiarism.
ISSUE:
Whether or not plagiarism is applicable to decisions promulgated by the Supreme Court.
HELD:
No. The implicit right of judges to use legal materials regarded as belonging to the public domain is not
unique to the Philippines. As Joyce C. George, whom Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno cites in her dissenting
opinion, observed in her Judicial Opinion Writing Handbook:
A judge writing to resolve a dispute, whether trial or appellate, is exempted from a charge of plagiarism
even if ideas, words or phrases from a law review article, novel thoughts published in a legal periodical
or language from a party's brief are used without giving attribution. Thus judges are free to use
whatever sources they deem appropriate to resolve the matter before them, without fear of reprisal.
This exemption applies to judicial writings intended to decide cases for two reasons: the judge is not
writing a literary work and, more importantly, the purpose of the writing is to resolve a dispute. As a
result, judges adjudicating cases are not subject to a claim of legal plagiarism.

Moreover, as realized by the Supreme Court, the omission of the acknowledgment by Justice Del Castillo
of the three foreign authors came from a clerical error. It was shown before the Supreme Court that the
researcher who finalized the draft written by Justice Del Castillo accidentally deleted the
citations/acknowledgements; that in all, there is still intent to acknowledge and not take such passages
as that of Justice Del Castillos own.
The interest of society in written decisions is not that they are originally crafted but that they are fair
and correct in the context of the particular disputes involved. Justice, not originality, form, and style, is
the object of every decision of a court of law.