There is now a vacancy in the 15-member Supreme Court (SC) with the disability retirement of Associate Justice Priscilla J. Baltazar Padilla effective November 3.

The SC’s public information office (PIO) did not elaborate on the cause or causes of Justice Padilla’s disability retirement.

But sources said the lady justice “is ill and may not be physically and mentally fit to discharge her duty as a magistrate.”

It is expected that the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) -- the constitutionally mandated office that accepts, screens, and nominates appointments to the judiciary – will open the application and nomination for the vacant post.

Padilla was plucked out of the Court of Appeals (CA) by President Duterte last July 16 as replacement to Associate Justice Andres B. Reyes Jr. who retired last May 11. 

She started her judicial career in 1996 as metropolitan trial court judge in Manila and later as a regional trial court judge. She was appointed CA associate justice in 2006.

A graduate of the Lyceum of the Philippines, Associate Justice Padilla placed fifth in the 1984 bar examinations with a rating of 90.3 per cent.  After passing the bar, she joined the law firm of Puno and Associates and, later in 1991, she formed a law office in partnership with her husband, Venancio Padilla.

She was a professor at the New Era University and the Universidad de Manila.  She was also a pre-bar reviewer on Persons and Family Relations, Obligations and Contracts, and Remedial Law subjects.

The lady justice authored a book, Quick Reviewer on the Law on Marriage and Family Relations.