J. B. L. Reyes - Supreme Court Service

Supreme Court Service

After nine years with the Court of Appeals, Reyes was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1954 by President Ramon Magsaysay. At 52, he was among the youngest justices appointed to the Court. However, Reyes would never get to serve as Chief Justice. This was in part because his close friend Roberto Concepcion, several months his junior, was appointed to the Court a few months before Reyes. Concepcion was named Chief Justice in 1966.

During his tenure on the Court, Reyes and Claro M. Recto were unsuccessfully nominated to the International Court of Justice.

In his 18 years on the Court, Reyes grew in prominence unlike few other Supreme Court magistrates before and since. His gruff voice and inscrutable stare, which had terrorized his students years before, similarly intimidated lawyers who argued in hearings before the Court. Often, especially on matters relating to his specialty, civil law, his opinions proved to be the final word. In some quarters, he was called "the Court", in tribute to the considerable influence he wielded over his colleagues. Upon his retirement in 1972, one of his colleagues, the future Chief Justice Felix Makasiar, said of Reyes that "o jurist within living memory has commanded during the last quarter of a century, the deep respect and admiration of the bench and bar, of dilettantes and scholars, of professors and students."