Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 21) — The nation's president should not be the only person who gets to appoint members of the judiciary, Supreme Court (SC) Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio has suggested.

“Maybe that should be the lesson from this circumstance in history where one person will be appointing about 12 of the members of the court,” the retiring Carpio told CNN Philippines. “The only thing that you can do from that is to profit from it, to learn from it and to improve the Constitution next time.”

He said the Constitution may be amended to clip the president’s power to appoint justices to the high court and adopt a system similar to other countries where the legislature and the judiciary also get to pick appointees to the court.

Currently, the Ombudsman, justices and judges are appointed by the president from a list of at least three nominees prepared by the Judicial and Bar Council for each vacancy.

President Rodrigo Duterte will be able to appoint a majority to the SC by the time his term ends in 2022, which has raised some concerns about the high court’s independence — especially since it has taken the side of the administration in several key issues in recent years.

But Carpio shrugged off accusations that the SC’s independence has been compromised.

“It depends, really, on the judge-justices themselves because they are free to decide cases,” he said.

Carpio added that the next chief justice, who will be replacing Lucas Bersamin, should be independent.

"Independence goes to the very core of being a judge. A judge has to be impartial and to be impartial, you have to be your own man, you have to be independent," he said.