Maria Filomena Singh
Maria Filomena "Monette" Dumandan Singh is a Filipino judge who has served as associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines since 2022.
Early life and education
Maria Filomena Singh was born on June 25, 1966. She is the eldest of six children born to barangay chairman and political strategist Harry Francisco Macalanda Singh and lawyer Clara Dizon Dumandan-Singh, both residents of Marikina.She graduated from the University of the Philippines, cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts in English major in imaginative writing. She earned a Juris Doctor from the Ateneo Law School with second honors distinction. She studied at the Washington College of Law of the American University in Washington, D.C., for a Master of Laws in International Legal Studies.
Judicial career
Singh joined the Philippine judiciary in October 2002 as presiding judge of the Metropolitan Trial Court, Branch 31, in Quezon City, and was promoted to the Regional Trial Court of the same city in June 2007, to Branch 85 thereof..She then served as an associate justice of the Court of Appeals of the Philippines from 2014 to 2022, succeeding Justice Rosalinda Asuncion-Vicente who retired in November 2013. She previously served as the senior member in the 3rd Division of the Court of Appeals under the chairpersonship of Justice Fernanda Lampas-Peralta.
On May 18, 2022, Singh was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Estela Perlas-Bernabe. Singh is Duterte's last appointment to the Supreme Court.
Controversies
Since her appointment as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines in 2022, Maria Filomena D. Singh has attracted controversy over her judicial approach to gender-related issues and her institutional advocacy within the judiciary. Some members of the legal community have criticized her approach as reflecting instrumentalist adjudication or the ideologicalization of judicial decision-making.Singh serves as a co-chair of the Supreme Court's Committee on Gender Responsiveness in the Judiciary and has been involved in leading the official research report Legal Feminism in Philippine Gender Jurisprudence. The report seeks to embed legal feminist theory and gender analysis frameworks into judicial decision-making and has been used in judicial training programs and policy discussions within the judiciary.
Interpretation of the Anti-VAWC Act
Some controversies have focused on Singh's interpretation of Republic Act No. 9262, also known as the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act . In her separate concurring opinions and public statements, Singh has argued that the statute should be understood as a compensatory, gender-specific measure, and that its interpretation should be grounded in addressing structural inequalities within intimate relationships. Within this framework, she has supported, in certain circumstances, a reduced emphasis on traditional criminal law requirements regarding mens rea, and has opposed gender-neutral interpretative approaches, arguing that such approaches may weaken the law's preferential protection for women.These interpretative positions were met with direct opposition from members of the Supreme Court. In G.R. No. 252739, Justice Alfredo Benjamin S. Caguioa explicitly criticized the reasoning advanced by Singh in his dissenting opinion. Caguioa argued that introducing policy considerations aimed at correcting marital or gender power imbalances into criminal adjudication risks amounting to "judicial legislation" and undermining the principles of mens rea and legality in criminal law. His dissent characterized aspects of the reasoning as "absurd" and employed the metaphor of a "feminist pendulum" to caution that excessive reliance on gender policy objectives could increase uncertainty in criminal norms and raise the risk of unjust convictions. Academic commentators have also engaged in discussions and critiques concerning these interpretative issues.