Three appellate court magistrates, two law professors, and an election official have made it to the shortlist of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) for the lone vacancy in the Supreme Court (SC).

The JBC list will be submitted to President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III from where he wil choose his first judicial appointee to sit as the 15th member of the High Court – the post vacated by the appointment of Chief Justice Renato C. Corona.

Court Administrator and SC Spokesman Jose Midas Marquez said the JBC – an independent body that screens nominees for vacant judicial posts – picked six of the 28 applicants and nominees.

The six are Court of Appeals (CA) Associate Justices Jaapar B. Dimaampao, Noel G. Tijam, and Hakim S. Abdulwahid; Commission on Elections Commissioner Rene V. Sarmiento; former University of the Philippines Law Dean Raul C. Pangalangan; and lawyer Maria Lourdes A. Sereno, executive director of the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center.

Marquez said Dimaampao got the nod of six JBC members, Pangalangan and Tijam got five while Abdulwahid, Sarmiento and Sereno received four votes each.

JBC is chaired by Chief Justice Corona. It presently has three ex-officio members and three regular members.

The ex-officio members are Justice Secretary Leila De Lima, Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero, and Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas Jr. While the regular members are retired SC Justice Regino Hermosisima Jr., private sector representative Justice Aurora Santiago Lagman, and Integrated Bar of the Philippines representative Atty. J. Conrado Castro.

Dimaampao was appointed to the CA in 2004. He was a Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge and Executive Judge of Mandaluyong City. At the age of 40, he was the youngest magistrate ever to have been appointed to the CA.

Pangalangan specializes in Public International and Constitutional Law. He taught Public International Law at the Harvard Law School as Visiting Professor in 2007. At The Hague Academy of International Law, he lectured on Disputed Islands in the South China Sea and Southeast Asia during its 2008 session and served  as Director of Studies in 2000.

Prior to his appointment to the CA in 2003, Tijam was Presiding Judge of the Quezon City RTC, Branch 221 in 1994 and served as  President of the Quezon City RTC Judges Association.

Before he was appointed to the appellate court, Abdulwahid was for 11 years Presiding Judge of the Zamboanga City RTC, Branch 12, a regular court and concurrently a designated special court for corporate cases, and at the same time, Pairing Judge of RTC, Branch 13, a special court for drug cases.

A law graduate from the University of the Philippines, Sarmiento became a commissioner of the Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitution, member of the government’s peace panel for talks with communist rebels during the Arroyo administration, and Deputy Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process from 2005 to 2006.

Sereno is a lecturer in International Law at the Philippine Judicial Academy. An advocate in international arbitration proceeding, Sereno is an acknowledged Filipino expert on World Trade Organization (WTO) issues.