In her office are boxes of neatly filed index cards colored red, white, yellow, orange and blue, reminding her of the lives at stake under the justice system and the urgency with which she should act on their cases.
These seemingly simple measures, plus a strict enforcement of a time table, enabled Judge Emily L. San Gaspar-Gito to steadily cut the backlog of cases pending in her sala from 626 to 74 in just four years. She did it by resolving an average of 33 cases a month.
Gito, who presides over Branch 20 of the Manila Metropolitan Trial Court, is one of the judges being honored by the Supreme Court Monday for doing her share in erasing the judiciary’s image as a creaking, snail-paced machinery.