Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago once during the impeachment trial against Chief Justice Renato Corona on the issue

whether or not the Supreme Court may review the actions of the Senate Impeachment Court said that although the Supreme Court is Supreme as it is, Senate sitting as an impeachment court nonetheless is high. She said that although they (Supreme Court) are supreme, We (Senate as Impeachment Court) are high. In a way, I agree with her. The constitution with all its textual ambiguities is quite clear as to the power of the Senate. Article XI Sec 3 (6) states that The Senate shall have the sole power to try and decide all cases of impeachment. Implicit to this is the Senates power to determine rules and procedures that are to be followed in the course of the impeachment proceedings. True to this power constitutionally guaranteed, the Senate seems to be utilizing this plenary mandate in determining rules that will govern the trial. One of the earliest question that was posed by both the prosecution and the defence is the required degree of proof or evidence required to convict or acquit the accused in an impeachment trial. Since there is no categorical rule in the beginning what degree of proof is required due to the sui generis nature of the proceeding, legal arguments supporting the different claims of interested parties including the Senate itself have been thrown on and on. Justice Cuevas, the lead counsel for the defence of the Chief Justice adamantly forwards the view that the degree of proof required should be that of proof beyond reasonable doubt. This is because the stand of the defence is that the impeachment is a criminal proceeding since the constitution talks about a conviction which is a criminal law concept. In addition, the defence opines that the constitution enumerates felonies defined in the penal code as grounds for impeachment. One can understand why the defences position is for proof beyond reasonable doubt which requires moral certainty that produces conviction in an unprejudiced mind. Should the Senate subscribes to the logic of the defence, it would be quite a challenge for the prosecution to get a conviction, especially at the rate they are going with the presentation of their case against Corona. The prosecution on the other hand is playing with the idea that even if the Constitution speaks of a conviction and enumerates quite a few felonies found in the Revised Penal Code, it also included betrayal of public trust which is a political concept widely used in administrative law. With this, the prosecution opines that the degree of proof required is only that of substantial evidence. Substantial evidence is defined as such amount of relevant evidence which a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to justify a conclusion. Obviously, the required proof that the prosecution is pressing is way more liberal than the very strict proof beyond reasonable doubt forwarded by the defence. There however, was a pronouncement already made by the presiding officer Juan Ponce Enrile that more or less shed light to the debate going on in relation to the nature of the impeachment trial. Enrile already at the beginning categorically opined that the impeachment trial is not criminal in nature in spite of the mention of the word conviction. Enrile declared that the trial though akin to a criminal procedure is simply not, which debunks the logic propounded by the defence. Nevertheless, Enriles ruling is also not quite in support with the view of the prosecution. Enrile finally said that the degree of proof required is neither proof beyond reasonable doubt nor substantial evidence. According to him, the required proof is extraordinary preponderance of evidence. This degree is unique. It is one, lower than proof beyond reasonable doubt but higher than that of preponderance of evidence which according to the case of Encinas vs. National Bookstore, Inc. means:

..the weight, credit, and value of the aggregate evidence on either side and is usually considered to be synonymous with the term greater weight of the evidence or greater weight of the credible evidence. Preponderance of evidence is a phrase which, in the last analysis, means probability of the truth. It is evidence which is more convincing to the court as worthy of belief than that which is offered in opposition thereto and of course higher than the requirement of substantial evidence. In a careful analysis, one will see that the view stated by the presiding officer is in fact more favourable to the defence than to the prosecution since extraordinary preponderance of evidence is closer to the evidence requirement asked by the defence and farther from the pleasure of the prosecution. With all the debates going on, this author firmly believes that the Senate should subscribe to a substantial evidence requirement. First of all, the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a public office and can never be considered as a property like any other public office no matter how low or high is, by the Constitution itself, a public trust. The ultimate effect of the impeachment trial if convicted is removal from office, there is no penal sanction that can in any way merit a view that the trial is criminal in nature. Therefore, since it is this authors belief that the primordial concern and issue in the impeachment proceeding is whether or not the person under trial is fit to still hold the public trust entailed in the position he occupies, it is more akin to if not in fact an administrative case which requires substantial evidence as the degree of proof for conviction or acquittal. Moreover, as already mentioned earlier, one of the grounds enumerated in the constitution is betrayal of public trust. This ground evidently is political in nature. The parameters by which public trust can be measured should be liberally construed otherwise, it would be close to impossible to prove betrayal of public trust that has no hard and fast rule laid down unlike criminal felonies that are subject already to the provisions of the Revised Penal Code and long lines of jurisprudence as to proving whether there is indeed betrayal or not. Culling from the Constitutional provision that public office is a public trust, once the Sovereign people who politically gave life to the Constitution has lost confidence with the holder of the office, a public officer may already be removed subject to due process requirement closer to the rules of administrative law that governs public officers.