Photo: From Supreme Court Publications Office
Justice Midas Marquez’s Judicial Reform Agenda: Building Business Confidence Through Institutional Continuity | For businesses, the rule of law is more than a constitutional principle. It underpins contracts, investment decisions, commercial confidence, and the ability to plan for the future. Justice Midas Marquez’s first proposed reform priority offers an important question: How can the Philippines turn judicial modernization into lasting economic value?
MANILA, Philippines — Every business decision involves some risk calculation. Companies assess market demand, financing costs, regulations, supply chains, and competition. But beneath these considerations lies another essential factor: confidence that agreements will be respected and disputes can be resolved fairly and within a reasonable time.
That is where the performance of the justice system becomes an economic issue.
For entrepreneurs, lenders, property developers, manufacturers, and foreign investors, uncertainty over commercial disputes can mean delayed projects, tied-up capital, mounting legal expenses, and difficult decisions about expansion. A reliable judiciary, by contrast, helps create the conditions in which businesses can make long-term commitments with greater confidence.
This makes the priority in Supreme Court Associate Justice Jose Midas P. Marquez’s proposed Strategic Plan for Judicial Innovations 2.0 particularly relevant to the business community: institutionalizing successful reforms already underway rather than repeatedly starting over. Marquez outlined this approach in the Daily Tribune report, “Marquez Outlines Five-Year Judicial Reform Plan.”
The Numbers Behind the Confidence Challenge
International indicators illustrate why judicial performance deserves attention as part of the Philippines’ broader competitiveness agenda.
According to the World Justice Project’s 2025 Rule of Law Index, the Philippines ranked 97th among 143 countries overall. Its civil justice factor ranked 106th, with a score of 0.44. These figures do not measure business confidence alone, but they highlight an area where continued institutional improvement matters.
The World Bank’s Business Ready assessment for the Philippines also identifies operational efficiency in court litigation as an important dimension of the business environment. Its published country results report a score of 45.68 out of 100 for operational efficiency and 35.62 out of 66.67 for the court litigation category.
For the private sector, the implications are practical. When disputes consume excessive time and resources, companies must account for uncertainty in their contracts, investments, and operating decisions. Smaller enterprises may be especially vulnerable because they have less financial capacity to sustain prolonged litigation.
Improving judicial efficiency is therefore not simply an administrative ambition. It can support a healthier environment for entrepreneurship, fair competition, and investment.
Why Continuity Can Be a Competitive Advantage
Marquez’s proposed approach builds on the Supreme Court’s existing Strategic Plan for Judicial Innovations 2022–2027, which focuses on timely and fair justice, transparency and accountability, inclusion, and technology-adaptive management. Its objectives include greater efficiency, innovation, and access to justice.
Institutionalizing successful reforms means making progress durable: embedding effective systems in daily operations, equipping personnel to use them, monitoring results, and ensuring that improvements survive changes in leadership.
The principle will be familiar to business executives. Companies do not become more competitive simply by launching new initiatives. They gain lasting value when successful processes become standard practice, employees understand them, performance is measured, and management acts on the evidence.
The same logic applies to judicial modernization.
Digital case management, electronic filing, improved administrative oversight, and better performance monitoring can deliver greater value when they operate as parts of a coherent system rather than isolated projects. The Supreme Court’s modernization program already provides a framework on which further improvements can build.
From Reform Announcements to Measurable Results
For business leaders, the next question is how to measure success.
Useful indicators could include case-disposition times, the age of pending cases, the consistency of court performance across regions, the time required to publish finalized decisions, and the reliability of digital court services. Commercial cases could also be monitored to better understand where delays arise, without compromising judicial independence or fairness.
These are suggested measures, not reported outcomes of Marquez’s proposal. Their value would lie in helping policymakers, court administrators, and the public distinguish between reforms that have been announced and those that demonstrably improve service delivery.
Speed, however, cannot be the only objective. Businesses need impartial decisions, predictable procedures, and equal treatment—not merely faster judgments. Efficiency must reinforce due process, never replace it.
A Stronger Judiciary, a Stronger Business Environment
Marquez’s priority points toward a larger ambition: a judiciary that steadily improves because successful reforms are sustained, evaluated, and strengthened over time.
For the Philippine business sector, that ambition deserves serious attention. Investment depends on more than incentives and infrastructure. It also depends on confidence in institutions, the enforceability of agreements, and the assurance that disputes can be resolved through a credible legal process.
Institutional continuity is not about resisting change. It is about ensuring that change produces lasting results.
If judicial modernization can translate into more timely proceedings, accessible court services, and dependable institutional performance, the benefits could extend well beyond courtrooms—to entrepreneurs taking risks, companies investing in growth, workers depending on stable enterprises, and communities seeking economic opportunity.
Ultimately, the business case for judicial reform is straightforward: when institutions become more dependable, businesses can spend less energy managing uncertainty and more energy creating value.
That is why making successful reforms endure may be one of the most consequential investments the Philippine justice system can make in the country’s long-term competitiveness.
