The Constitution does not speak casually, especially when it comes to accountability. In the architecture of impeachment, every word carries weight because the process itself is an extraordinary check on power. 

That is why the Supreme Court’s recent reading of the term “forthwith” as merely “within a reasonable time” is a quiet but consequential dilution of a constitutional command.

“Forthwith” is not an empty vessel waiting to be filled by judicial discretion. It is a term with a settled legal meaning, long understood to require immediate action or, at the very least, action with a sense of urgency that leaves no room for prolonged delay. 

Courts have historically distinguished it from softer, more flexible language such as “within a reasonable time” or “as soon as practicable.” The framers of the Constitution were not strangers to these distinctions. If they had intended to grant the Senate broad leeway in timing impeachment trials, they could have said so plainly. Instead, they chose a word that signals compulsion, not convenience.

By equating “forthwith” with “reasonable time,” the Court effectively rewrites it. A textual command becomes a discretionary standard. What was meant to be a trigger for immediate institutional response is transformed into an open-ended allowance for delay. This shift is subtle in language but profound in consequence.

The structural design of impeachment reinforces this point. The Constitution imposes specific time constraints on the House of Representatives when initiating impeachment proceedings, ensuring that complaints are acted upon without undue delay.

The Senate, by contrast, is not given a numerical deadline, but it is given the directive to proceed “forthwith.” This asymmetry is not an oversight. It reflects a division of roles. The House investigates and accuses under defined limits, while the Senate, once jurisdiction attaches, must transition swiftly into its quasi-judicial role.

The absence of a fixed number does not imply freedom to delay. The presence of “forthwith” supplies the necessary urgency. To read that urgency out of the text is to distort the balance the Constitution carefully constructs.

Stretching beyond imagination 

More troubling is the Supreme Court’s conclusion that a four-month delay can still qualify as “timely.” It is not just unpersuasive, it collapses the Constitution’s demand for urgency into a tolerance for inertia.

At that point, the word “forthwith” ceases to do any real work. To say that a delay of several months is still “timely” is to stretch the word beyond recognition. If four months qualifies, what does not? Six months? A year? At some point, the Court must either draw a line or admit that the term imposes no meaningful constraint at all.

If the Senate may delay impeachment proceedings for months under the banner of “reasonableness,” it effectively acquires the power to neutralize impeachment without ever voting on the merits. Time, in this sense, becomes a political instrument.

Evidence grows stale, public attention dissipates, and alliances shift. It gives the respondent the full benefit of continued office without the burden of immediate accountability. In practical terms, delay becomes a form of relief. That is precisely what “forthwith” is meant to prevent.

To be sure, the Court invokes familiar doctrines in its defense: respect for a co-equal branch and reluctance to intrude into the Senate’s internal processes. These are legitimate concerns. But deference has its limits. It does not authorize the Court to empty constitutional language of its force.

There is a meaningful middle ground between rigid control and complete abdication. The Court could have affirmed that “forthwith” imposes a real, enforceable constraint against prolonged or unjustified delay, without prescribing an exact timetable. Instead, it chose near-total deference, even concluding that a four-month delay is “timely,” leaving the command effectively unenforced.

The danger of this approach lies in precedent. If explicit textual commands can be recast as flexible standards whenever institutional convenience demands it, then the discipline imposed by constitutional language begins to erode. Words that once constrained power become suggestions, their meaning contingent on circumstance rather than anchored in principle.

“Forthwith” was never meant to be optional. It was meant to ensure that when the gravest mechanism of accountability is set in motion, the response is immediate, serious, and unambiguous.

By reducing it to a question of reasonableness, the Court risks turning urgency into delay, and in the process, weakening one of the Constitution’s most vital safeguards. – Rappler.com

Raul F. Borjal is an alumnus of Ateneo de Manila University. He held  senior executive positions in various domestic and multinational companies, culminating in his retirement as vice president and corporate secretary of a Filipino-owned group of companies.