Anacleto Diaz

Infobox Philippine Supreme Court Associate Justice|small

name=Anacleto Diaz
order=
term start= July 20, 1933
term end= December 19, 1941
predecessor= Ignacio Villamor
successor= None ("reorganized after Japanese organization")
appointer=Franklin D. Roosevelt
date of birth= birth date|1878|11|20|mf=y
place of birth= Aringay, La Union
date of death= death date and age|1945|2|10|1878|11|20|mf=y
place of death= Manila

Anacleto Diaz (November 20, 1878 — February 10, 1945) was a Filipino jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Profile

Diaz earned his law degree from the Escuela de Derecho de Manila. He was elected as a representative from La Union to the Philippine Assembly in 1910, and served in that capacity until 1912. That year, he was named a provincial fiscal for Ilocos Sur. In 1917, he was appointed city fiscal of Manila. He was later appointed as a trial court judge. [ Justices of the Supreme Court, p. 156 ]

In 1927, while serving as a judge, Diaz was appointed to head a commission tasked with revising the penal code of the Philippines. By 1930, his committee had finished drafting the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines, which remains as the basic penal law in the Philippines as of 2006.

Diaz was appointed to the Supreme Court by the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 20, 1933. Among his more notable opinions was in "People v. Cu Unjieng", 61 Phil. 236 (1935), which was one of the more widely talked about criminal cases of its day.

Diaz's service in the Court was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. The ensuing Japanese invasion of the Philippines in December 1941 effectively prevented the Supreme Court organized under the Commonwealth government. When the Japanese reestablished the Court in 1942, none of the incumbent members of the old Court were appointed to the new tribunal headed by Jose Yulo.

Death

Diaz would be one of 2 Supreme Court Justices who were executed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Battle of Manila in 1945. On February 10, the then wheelchair-bound Diaz and two of his sons were among 300 men herded by the Japanese army and lined up along the corner of Taft Avenue and Padre Faura in Ermita, Manila. Japanese soldiers then opened machine gun fire, killing Diaz and his sons as well as scores of others. [ By Sword and Fire, p. 253-255 ] Two days later, Diaz's colleague on the Court, Antonio Villa-Real, would also be murdered by the Japanese forces in nearby Pasay.

Ironically, the vicinity where Diaz was executed would later become part of the Supreme Court compound when the Court relocated to Padre Faura after the war.

References

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