Renato Corona

He placed 25th out of 1,965 candidates in the bar examination with a grade of 84.6%.

After pursuing law studies, he obtained his Master of Business Administration degree at the Ateneo Professional Schools.

Renato Tereso Antonio Coronado Corona (October 15, 1948 – April 29, 2016) was a Filipino judge who was the 23rd chief justice of the Philippines from 2010 to 2012.

Renato Tereso Antonio Coronado Corona was born on October 15, 1948, at the Lopez Clinic in Santa Ana, Manila, Philippines.

He was the son of Juan M. Corona, a lawyer from Tanauan, Batangas, and Eugenia Ongcapin Coronado, a summa cum laude accounting graduate of the University of Santo Tomas, of Santa Cruz, Manila.

He was married to Cristina Basa Roco.

They had three children and six grandchildren.

Corona graduated with gold medal honors from the Ateneo de Manila grade school in 1962 and high school in 1966.

He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree, with honors, also from Ateneo de Manila, in 1970, where he was the editor-in-chief of The GUIDON, the university student newspaper.

He finished his Bachelor of Laws at the Ateneo Law School in 1974.

In 1981, he was accepted to the Master of Laws program of the Harvard Law School, where he focused on foreign investment policies and the regulation of corporate and financial institutions.

He was conferred the degree LL.M. in 1982.

He earned his Doctor of Civil Law degree from the University of Santo Tomas, summa cum laude and was the class valedictorian.

On January 22, 1987, during Corazon Cojuangco Aquino's presidency, thousands of farmers marched to Malacañang Palace to demand the distribution of the land.

The Palace's violent dispersion of the farmers became known as the Mendiola Massacre.

"[T]he non-applicability of Section 15, Article VII to appointments in the Judiciary was confirmed by then Senior Associate Justice Regalado to the JBC itself when it met on March 9, 1998 to discuss the question raised by some sectors about the "constitutionality of xxx appointments" to the Court of Appeals in light of the forthcoming presidential elections. He assured that "on the basis of the (Constitutional) Commission's records, the election ban had no application to appointments to the Court of Appeals."

The Court pointed out that, on the contrary, under the constitutional provisions for the Judicial Department, "Section 4(1) and Section 9, Article VIII, mandate the President to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court within 90 days from the occurrence of the vacancy. . . . Under the Constitution, it is mandatory for the JBC to submit to the President the list of nominees to fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court in order to enable the President to appoint one of them within the 90-day period from the occurrence of the vacancy."

The President had an "imperative duty under the Constitution to fill up the vacancies created by such inexorable retirements within 90 days from their occurrence."

The Hacienda Luisita legal battle and final Supreme Court decision spanned almost fifty years.

The Cojuangco-Aquinos refused to honor their legal obligation to distribute the land under the social justice program, as per the terms of the loan that allowed them to take over the Hacienda.

He served as an associate justice after being appointed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on April 9, 2002, and later as Chief Justice on May 12, 2010, upon the retirement of Chief Justice Reynato Puno.

Corona was previously a law professor, private law practitioner and member of the Cabinet under former presidents Fidel V. Ramos and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo before being appointed to the high tribunal.

On November 2004, the farmers held a strike against the mass retrenchment of farm workers and to request for higher pay, however they were dispersed by the police by the then Labor Secretary Patricia Santo Tomás which resulted to the deaths of 7 people, and imprisonment of 133 others, this was known as the Hacienda Luisita Massacre.

On May 12, 2010, two days after the 2010 general election and a month before President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's term expired, Corona was appointed the 23rd Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, succeeding Reynato Puno who had reached the mandatory age of retirement.

His appointment was criticized by then-presidential candidate Benigno Aquino III, who would have appointed the next Chief Justice had Corona not been appointed.

Aquino erroneously cited the election-period prohibition against presidential appointments that only applies to the Executive branch.

The Supreme Court held in de Castro v. JBC that this constitutional prohibition does not apply to appointments to the Supreme Court.

"Had the framers intended to extend the prohibition contained in Section 15, Article VII to the appointment of Members of the Supreme Court, they could have explicitly done so."

Article VII of the Philippine Constitution is specifically titled "Executive Department" and thus only applies to the Executive Branch of the government.

Article VIII of the Philippine Constitution is titled "Judicial Department."

Thus, any prohibition as to appointments to the Judiciary should be found under Article VIII, but there is none.

"They would have easily and surely written the prohibition made explicit in Section 15, Article VII as being equally applicable to the appointment of Members of the Supreme Court in Article VIII itself, most likely in Section 4 (1), Article VIII."

"That such specification was not done only reveals that the prohibition against the President or Acting President making appointments within two months before the next presidential elections . . . does not refer to the Members of the Supreme Court."

"Section 15, Article VII does not apply as well to all other appointments in the Judiciary."

In November, 2011, the Supreme Court, headed by Corona, issued a landmark decision on the Hacienda Luisita case, wherein, under agrarian reform laws, the Court upheld both the distribution of land to the hacienda's farm workers and the revocation of the SDO agreement forged in 1989.

The Cojuangco group was given a ten-year window to distribute the lands to the farmers as stipulated.

On July 5, 2011, the High Court had upheld the decision by the Department of Agrarian Reform and the PARC, revoking a 1989 stock distribution option in lieu of land distribution under the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

But the Court also allowed each of the farmworkers to make a choice, either a piece of farmlot or shares of stocks.

In November, 2011, in a 56-page ruling, all 14 Supreme Court justices, voting en banc, unanimously agreed that the contested land should be distributed by the Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) to the original 6,296 farmer-beneficiaries pursuant to an order of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council in December 2005.

In ordering that the said estate owned by the family of President Benigno Cojuangco Aquino III be distributed to the farmers, the Court finally settled the long-standing dispute over the 4,915.75-hectare Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac.