THE Supreme Court (SC) en banc has appointed Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Ma. Theresa Dolorez Gomez- Estoesta as the new Court Administrator.
Gomez-Estoesta took her oath before Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo last Monday.
She replaced Court Administrator Raul Villanueva, who was appointed last month as the newest SC Associate Justice.
As Court Administrator, Gomez-Estoesta will manage over 2,000 judges and 26,000 court personnel nationwide.
Gomez-Estoesta has served the government for 34 years, starting as a solicitor at the Office of the Solicitor General from 1991 to 2002.
She joined the Judiciary in 2002 after she was appointed as presiding judge of Branch 6 of the Manila Metropolitan Trial Court.
Four years later, she was promoted as presiding judge of Branch 7 of the Manila Regional Trial Court, a position she held until 2014 when she was named to the Sandiganbayan.
At the anti-graft court, Gomez-Estoesta served as chair of its Seventh Division.
Gomez-Estoesta is also active in legal education, having been a lecturer since 2015 at the Ateneo de Manila School of Law and is also a professional lecturer at the Philippine Judicial Academy.
She also served as a Bar examiner for remedial law and legal ethics in the 2024 Bar examinations.
Gomez-Estoesta’s appointment comes in the midst of an ongoing modernization as part of the Strategic Plans for Judicial Innovations 2022-2027 to make it more responsive, service-focused, and better supported across regions.
As part of the modernization, a Central OCA Leadership Team, headed by the Court Administrator, will take the lead in setting overall strategy, policy direction and innovation initiatives for trial courts.
At the same time, court administrative functions are being decentralized to the newly-established Office of the Regional Court Administrator across judicial regions.
Six interim regional court administrators were launched in 2024 as part of the ongoing reform.
