Final and Executory Judgments of Lower Courts Not Reviewable Even by Supreme Court

Final and Executory Judgments of
Lower Courts Not Reviewable
Even by Supreme Court

In respect of Courts below the Supreme Court, the ordinary remedies available under law to a party who is adversely affected by their decisions or orders are a motion for new trial (or reconsideration) under Rule 37, and an appeal to either the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court, depending on whether questions of both fact and law, or of law only, are raised, in accordance with fixed and familiar rules and conformably with the hierarchy of courts. 51Exceptionally, a review of a ruling or act of a court on the ground that it was rendered without or in excess of its jurisdiction, or with grave abuse of discretion, may be had through the special civil action of certiorari or prohibition pursuant to Rule 65 of the Rules of Court.

However, should judgments of lower courts — which may normally be subject to review by higher tribunals — become final and executory before, or without, exhaustion of all recourse of appeal, they, too, become inviolable, impervious to modification. They may, then, no longer be reviewed, or in anyway modified directly or indirectly, by a higher court, not even by the Supreme Court, much less by any other official, branch or department of Government. 52

C. Administrative Civil or Criminal Action
against Judge. Not Substitute for Appeal;
Proscribed by Law and Logic

Now, the Court takes judicial notice of the fact that there has been of late a regrettable increase in the resort to administrative prosecution — or the institution of a civil or criminal action — as a substitute for or supplement to appeal. Whether intended or not, such a resort to these remedies operates as a form of threat or intimidation to coerce judges into timorous surrender of their prerogatives, or a reluctance to exercise them. With rising frequency, administrative complaints are being presented to the Office of the Court Administrator; criminal complaints are being filed with the Office of the Ombudsman or the public prosecutor's office; civil actions for recovery of damages commenced in the Regional Trial Courts against trial judges, and justices of the Court of Appeals and even of the Supreme Court.