What you need to know about the Revised Rules on Evidence

No less than 26th Supreme Court Chief Justice Diosdado M. Peralta and Court of Appeals Associate Justice Eduardo B. Peralta, Jr. wrote the much-awaited book titled “Insights on Evidence”, which contains the most updated Supreme Court revisions on the Philippines’ rules on evidence.

In his foreword for the book, Justice Romeo J. Callejo, Sr., Vice-Chancellor of the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA), said that this book “aims to highlight the salient points of the 2019 Rules on Evidence, reconcile its provisions with those of the retained rules, and address the gaps or inconsistencies that might result in the application of the new procedural rules.”

This latest edition will be “even more comprehensive, given the recent approval of the 2019 Proposed Amendments to the Revised Rules on Evidence,” he added.

Highlighting the indispensable role of the rules on evidence in insuring “a better quality of justice for its various rules prevent the tampering of truth” so that “its mastery by our arbiters of justice is a must for its wrong application is certain to result in failure of justice,” former Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno, who initiated back in 2008 the proposed amendments to the Revised Rules on Evidence, lauded the book for having drawn on the “wisdom of the most learned commentators on the law on evidence like McCormick, Mueller, Kirkpatrick, Lempert, Saltzburg, and others.”

Chief Justice Peralta said he is grateful and appreciative of his co-author, Justice Eduardo Peralta, Jr. “for allowing him to make a humble contribution to his opus: Perspectives of Evidence,” describing him as “one of the leading lights and a credible authority in the intricacies of remedial law.”

For his part, Justice Eduardo Peralta, Jr. said that “to collaborate with no less than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in spurring a project on the new Rules on Evidence, following promulgation by the Supreme Court of A.M. No. 19-08-15-SC on October 8, 2019 effective May 1, 2020, was definitely a daunting task.”

He adds: “With invocation of divine intercession and focus amidst the global pandemic since December 2019, the product labelled Insights on Evidence finally materialized.”

About the authors

Supreme Court Chief Justice Peralta was born in Laoag City, Ilocos Norte, to former Manila Court of First Instance (CFI) Judge Elviro Lazo Peralta and public school teacher Catalina Madarang Peralta. He took up Law at the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Civil Law while working part-time and graduated in 1979. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Economics from the Colegio de San Juan de Letran in 1974.

He entered government service in 1987 as a Third Assistant City Fiscal of Laoag City, and was awarded Most Outstanding Public Prosecutor of Manila for 1990-1991, and in 1994 by the City of Manila and by the Department of Justice. He was later appointed as, judge of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Judge designated as special court in heinous crimes and drug cases.

He was appointed in 2002 as Associate Justice of the Sandiganbayan and, in 2008, as Presiding Justice of the anti-graft court. Prior to becoming a member of the Supreme Court on January 13, 2009, he was a professor, lecturer, resource person, and Bar reviewer in Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Remedial Law, and Trial Techniques at the UST Faculty of Civil Law, the Ateneo de Manila University, San Beda College of Law, the University of the East, and the University of the Philippines Law Center, among others. He has been a member of the Corps of Professors under the Department of Criminal Law of the Philippine Judicial Academy and remains to be an active lecturer thereof on its Orientation Program for Newly-appointed Judges, Pre-judicature Program and other training seminars, even after his appointment as Chief Justice on October 23, 2019.

At present, Chief Justice Peralta is the Chairperson of the Committee on the Revision of the Rules of Court (Mother Rule Committee), the Chairperson of the Sub-Committee on the Revision of the 1997 Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Chairperson of the Special Committee for the Rules on Inspection of the Philippine Competition Commission, the Special Committee for the Rules of Procedure for Admiralty Cases, as well as the Sub-Committees for the Revision of the Rules of Procedure for Intellectual Property Rights Cases and the Revision of the Rules on Criminal Procedure.

CA Associate Justice Eduardo B. Peralta, Jr. is a professor of law and an accomplished author of legal publications, particularly in Remedial Law. He graduated from the San Beda College of Law in 1988 and passed the Bar in 1989. He was part of the legal staff of then CA Justice Jose Armando R. Melo, and later in the Supreme Court. He was appointed judge of the Metropolitan Trial Court of Manila at a young age of 32, and also served as the First and Second Vice-Executive Judge. He was also a Presiding Judge of Branch 17 and Executive Judge of the Regional Trial Court of Manila until his promotion to the Court of Appeals in 2010.

In his spare time, he taught law in San Beda and in other top universities in the country. He holds the distinction of being the first graduate of the San Beda Graduate School of Law Masteral Degree program in 2005 and hailed cum laude for his dissertation on the law on evidence.

“Insights on Evidence” is now available at all REX Book Store branches nationwide. To order online, visit //www.rexestore.com/home/2175-insights-on-evidence-2020-edition-cloth-bound.html