THE Supreme Court announced on Wednesday the appointment of retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Arturo D. Brion as the new Chancellor of the Philippine Judicial Academy (PhilJA) starting June 1.
Brion will replace retired Associate Justice Adolfo S. Azcuna, who has served as PhilJA Chancellor since June 1, 2009.
His appointment was contained in a notice dated May 11, 2021 and issued for the SC by Clerk of Court Marife M. Lumibao Cuevas.
Under Republic Act 8557 that created PhilJA, Brion will serve as chancellor for two years, a term of office that can be extended by the SC.
PhilJA was created by the SC in 1996. After two years it got its mandate under RA 8557, which institutionalized the academy as “training school for justices, judges, court personnel, lawyers, and aspirants to judicial posts.”
PhilJA has a governing board known as Board of Trustees, which is composed of the Chief Justice as ex-officio chairman; senior associate justice as ex-officio vice chairman; the chancellor of the academy; the presiding justices of the Court of Appeals and the Sandiganbayan, the Court Administrator, the president of the Philippine Judges Association, and the president of the Philippine Association of Law Schools, as ex-officio members; and a judge of a first level court, as appointive member.
Brion graduated cum laude at the Ateneo de Manila University Law School and topped the 1974 Bar Examinations with an average of 91.65 percent.
He first entered government service as a clerical aide in the now defunct Court of Agrarian Relations in 1970, while he was still in law school.
After serving as Labor Undersecretary and, subsequently, as Foreign Affairs Undersecretary, Justice Brion was appointed as an Associate Justice of the Court of Appeals in 2003.
After his stint at the appellate court in July 2006, Justice Brion returned to the Executive branch when he was appointed as Secretary of the Department of Labor and Employment, a post he held until his appointment as 161st Associate Justice of the SC on March 17, 2008.
He retired from the Court on December 29, 2016.