Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio retires today after serving the Supreme Court for 18 years.
Carpio will be 70-years-old, the mandatory retirement age for members of the Judiciary, today.
He was appointed SC associate justice by then President Gloria M. Arroyo in 2001. He assumed office on his birth anniversary on Oct. 26, 2001.
“It was a very long journey allowing me to write 935 full blown long decisions, 79 dissenting opinions, 30 concurring opinions, 13 separate opinions, and four concurring and dissenting opinions, leaving no backlog,” Carpio said during his last flag-raising ceremony at the SC last Monday.
He said that after his retirement, he will continue on his research and writings, and will hold lectures in the country and even abroad.
“I have several invitations to talk about the West Philippine Sea in Japan and in the United States. I have friends researching on the same subject, who are also interested in the same subject and we agree to meet regularly and see how we should proceed from there,” he said in an earlier interview.
He also said: “I am always available to defend our sovereign rights in the WPS. I don’t have to have any formal position. They want my opinion, my recommendation, I will give it willingly and gladly.”
In 2011, Carpio wrote the SC decision which upheld the Philippine Baselines Law consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
In 2017, Carpio published the book titled “The South China Sea Dispute: Philippine Sovereign Rights and Jurisdiction in the West Philippine Sea.”
He was a part of the Philippine legal team that won in 2016 the country’s claim against China over the South China Sea territories.
The 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration invalided China’s nine-dash line claim to the South China Sea, including part of the WPS. (Rey Panaligan)
