The Justice Cecilia Muñoz Palma High School (JCMPHS), the second most populous high school in Quezon City, will be receiving early Christmas gifts this month.
With the school forced to conduct online classes due to ongoing pandemic, the Justice Cecilia Muñoz Palma Foundation (JCMPF) has decided to donate to the JCMPH 150 computers to the teachers on the occasion of the late magistrate’s birthday this Nov. 22.
As part of keeping her beacon alive, the foundation has been engaged, among others, in “promoting academic achievement among deserving yet underprivileged youth from poor communities in Metro Manila.”
This includes assisting the JCMPHS in “creating better learning environment and in facilitating access to quality education and scholarships for its students who mostly come from Payatas.”
The JCMPF noted that the JCMPHS currently has a student population of around 11,000 from Payatas and its neighboring communities with families dependent on income coming from dumpsite scavenging, vegetable vending, housekeeping and laundry jobs.
The Foundation reminded that Palma “grew up to become one of the great leaders in Philippine contemporary history.”
The late justice graduated a valedictorian in her high school class in 1931 at the St. Scholastica’s College in Manila and topped the Bar Examination in 1937 with a score of 92.6 percent after having finished law from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law where she received academic honors.
Known as the “woman of firsts” in the country’s legal profession being the first female prosecutor and first woman in the SC, Celing also served as a trailblazer for Filipinas even as a student when she became the first female president of the Student Council of the College of Law and was even first place in the first oratorical contest of the UP Debating Club.
Though she was appointed to the SC by late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the JCMPF said “Justice Palma voiced her strong dissent to violations of the Constitution and the Rule of Law, and desecration of the individual’s basic rights to freedom, justice and due process.”
“She championed an independent judiciary, free from the clutches of political power. Justice Palma’s unflinching courage earned her the people’s admiration and gratitude, and she was given the accolade of being the only ‘man in the Supreme Court’ during her time,” it said.
Even after she retired from the SC, Palma got elected to the Batasan Pambansa and, during her legislative stint, she chaired the Committee of the Opposition which pushed for the impeachment of then President Marcos.
After the fall of the Marcos regime, Palma was picked in 1986 by then President Corazon Aquino as part of the Constitutional Commission, which the late magistrate headed as president, to craft the 1987 Constitution.