FORMER Court of Appeals (CA) Cebu Station associate justice Ramon Paul Hernando was appointed to the Supreme Court (SC) by President Rodrigo Duterte last Oct. 10.
Hernando, who was assigned in the CA Cebu Station from 2010 to 2014, was among the local magistrates who excelled in both the academe and the appeals court, said Associate Justice Gabriel Ingles.
“Justice Hernando has distinguished himself in the appellate court with his honesty, probity, independence and prodigious case disposition rate,” said Ingles in a statement.
Hernando led the entire CA in adjudication for two successive years, in 2012 (with 370 decided cases) and in 2013 (in which he disposed of 417 cases), thereby resulting in a zero backlog docket by April 2014.
His total disposal of 1,389 cases from 2010 to 2014, or a year-to-year average of 278 decisions, is the highest among all incumbent justices and all three stations of the CA during that five-year period.
After earning his law degree from San Beda College of Law in 1990, Justice Hernando went straight to public service.
He worked as a research attorney with two eminent jurists of the SC, Justice Edgardo Paras and Justice Florenz Regalado, before joining the Department of Justice as a state prosecutor.
The Bench beckoned in 2003, at which time he became a judge of the Regional Trial Court of San Pablo City, Laguna and later Quezon City, his immediate post prior to his elevation to the CA on Feb. 16, 2010 at the age of 43.
On Oct. 10, 2018, at the age of 52, he was promoted to the SC.
Hernando, the first CA Cebu justice to be promoted associate justice of the SC, has had an equally impressive stint in the academe.
He is currently a faculty member of the Ateneo de Manila Law School.
Since 1992, he has taught subjects in Civil Law, Remedial Law, and Commercial Law in several prominent law schools. including San Beda College of Law, UST Faculty of Civil Law, FEU Institute of Law, Angeles University Foundation School of Law, Xavier University College of Law and the University of San Carlos School of Law and Governance.
Hernando served further with distinction as a three-time bar examiner in Commercial Law in the 2009, 2011 and 2016 Bar Examinations, and is presently a professorial lecturer and member of the Commercial Law Department of the Philippine Judicial Academy, the education arm of the SC.
The 52-year-old magistrate will serve in the highest court of the land for 18 years before he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70.