SENIOR Associate Justice Leonardo Quisumbing on Thursday retired from the Supreme Court after serving the judiciary for more than 11 years.

Quisumbing, who has reached the mandatory retirement age of 70, also served as consultant to the Judicial and Bar Council, which screens applications for positions in the judiciary, and the Senate Electoral Tribunal, prior to his retirement.

Among the decisions he penned involved the case of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. versus Marcopper Mining Corp. Quisumbing directed the mining firm to pay the bank $5,425,485, excluding penalty, representing its unpaid obligation.

Quisumbing also penned the controversial ruling allowing a certain Jennifer Cagandahan to change her name to Jeff Cagandahan, and her gender from female to male.

The ruling acknowledged that Cagandahan is considered biologically “intersex” or has a mixed composition which is neither consistently and  categorically female or male.

Thus, in such cases, the Court said the determining factor in classifying the person’s gender would be what the individual, having reached the age of majority, with good reason thinks of his or her sex.

The SC now has two vacancies as the Palace has yet to appoint a new justice for the vacant post left by the retirement of Associate Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago who retired October 15.

The JBC has also started its public interviews of nominees to the post. On Thursday, Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Alexander Gesmundo and Makati 1st District Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. were also interviewed by the JBC.

Gesmundo was grilled by the council on the delays in the disposition of cases involving the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses, considering that he was a former member of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG).

Gesmundo told the JBC the delay was due to several factors such as the number of parties, number of lawyers involved, the validity of the evidence, and the unavailability of the original documents pertaining to the ill-gotten properties confiscated by US authorities when the Marcoses fled to Hawaii after the Edsa People Power 1.

During his interview, Locsin, also a well-respected journalist,  told the JBC he hopes to bring  to the judiciary the knowledge and insights he gained during his stint in Congress.

“I would consider myself, it sounds pretentious and I must apologize, but even as a journalist I considered myself more as an intellectual man who took ideas seriously and tried to understand the issues. My work as a journalist was never descriptive, it was always analytical,” he said.

“What I would wish to contribute is, one, to bring to the decisions of the court the knowledge and insights I gained from my work in the legislature to see in what respect the legislature must be blindly adhered to, in what respect it might have to be tempered in its pronouncements, again always with a due sense of modesty being a coequal branch of government,” he added.

Locsin also told the JBC he is not in favor of the move of some politicians to strip the JBC of its power to select the members of the judiciary and to return such power to the Commission on Appointments.

“The appointment of judges, the appointment of any official for that matter passing through the political process, is highly compromising. I’ve seen that from my own experience as a legislator….It is really dangerous and will dilute the quality of the judiciary,” he added.

Among those who were already interviewed were Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Teresita Baldos, Court of Appeals Associate Justice Estela Bernabe, CA Associate Justice Rosmari Carandang and CA Associate Justice Magdangal de Leon.

Also on Thursday, three newly appointed appellate court associate justices—Justices Agnes Carpio, Ramon Cruz, and Edwin Sorongon—took their oath before Chief Justice Reynato Puno. J.R. San Juan