09/10/2026
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An earlier position taken by former Supreme Court Associate Justice Adolfo Azcuna has resurfaced amid the continuing debate over the number of votes required to convict Vice President Sara Duterte in her impeachment trial.
Azcuna has maintained that the 1987 Constitution requires the concurrence of two-thirds of all members of the Senate to convict an impeached official. With a 24-member Senate, this translates to 16 votes. He has argued that the threshold should not automatically be reduced simply because some senators are absent, suspended, detained, or otherwise unable to participate, as long as they remain members of the Senate.
βWhere the law does not distinguish, neither should we distinguish. The law says βallβ the members,β Azcuna told GMA News in discussing the issue.
Azcunaβs position has again drawn attention as the Senate impeachment court continues to face questions over whether the 16-vote threshold should remain unchanged despite the absence of some senator-judges.
The constitutional provision at the center of the controversy is Article XI, Section 3(6) of the 1987 Constitution, which states that no person shall be convicted in an impeachment trial without the concurrence of βtwo-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.β Since the Senate has 24 members, two-thirds is mathematically equivalent to 16 votes.
Azcunaβs interpretation carries particular significance because he is not only a former Supreme Court Associate Justice, but also a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission, the body that drafted the present Constitution. Official records of the Constitutional Commission identify Azcuna as one of its members.
In a later interview, Azcuna further explained that the Constitution could have used language referring only to senators βparticipating and votingβ if that were the intended basis for the impeachment threshold. Instead, the Constitution specifically uses the phrase βall the members of the Senate.β He said this language should not simply be changed or reinterpreted because some senators are unable to participate.
Azcuna has also warned that reducing the threshold whenever senators are unable to participate could potentially create opportunities for manipulation. In his view, requiring two-thirds of the Senateβs full membership serves as a safeguard against attempts to influence an impeachment outcome by reducing the number of senators who can participate.
However, Azcunaβs position is not a binding ruling on the Senate impeachment court or the Supreme Court. Other legal experts have offered a different interpretation, including arguments that the number of senators entitled to vote could affect the computation. The disagreement is one reason the constitutional issue remains a subject of legal debate.
The controversy is particularly significant in the impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte, where the required number of votes could determine whether the Senate reaches the constitutional threshold for conviction.
For Azcuna, however, the starting point is the text of the Constitution itself: two-thirds of βall the Members of the Senate.β Under the present 24-member Senate, his interpretation means 16 votes are required to convict, regardless of whether some senators are unable to participate, unless their legal status as members of the Senate itself changes.
The ongoing dispute therefore comes down to a fundamental constitutional question: Should βtwo-thirds of all the Members of the Senateβ mean the full 24-member Senate, or should the threshold be recalculated based on senators who are actually able to participate and vote?
For one of the former justices who helped draft the Constitution, the wording provides the starting pointβand the word βallβ remains central to his interpretation.
