Supreme Court Associate Justice Adolfo Azcuna will bow out of service as a member of the 15-member tribunal when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 on Monday.

Chief Justice Reynato Puno will lead a retirement ceremony for Azcuna during the high court?s ?special en banc? session at 4 p.m. today. A reception thereafter will be held at the Fiesta Pavilion of the historic Manila Hotel.

Azcuna, who is the second tribunal member to retire this year after Associate Justice Ruben Reyes, advocated for the introduction of the writ of amparo into the country?s legal system to protect citizens from threats and violations of their right to life, liberty, and security not only from the government itself, but also from private individuals.

On Oct. 16, 2007, the high court formally adopted the Rule on the Writ of Amparo, now the citizens? legal weapon against extrajudicial killings and disappearances.

Being a staunch advocate of the legal remedy, Azcuna included in his questionnaire to aspiring lawyers the Writ of Amparo in the 1991 Bar examinations. He was then a Bar examiner.

Azcuna was appointed to the high court on Oct. 17, 2002 by President Arroyo.

Last year, the SC rendered its precedent-setting ruling that granted two suspected communist sympathizers a Writ of Amparo that would protect them from harassment and arrest by the military in a decision written by Chief Justice Puno.

Azcuna was born in Katipunan, Zamboanga del Norte, on Feb. 16, 1939 to Felipe Azcuna and Carmen Sevilla. He finished law, cum laude, at the Ateneo de Manila University in 1962 and was a fourth placer in the 1962 Bar examinations.

From 1967 to 1986, Azcuna taught International Law at Ateneo. In between his teaching profession, he completed post-graduate studies in International Law at the Salzburg University in Austria.

He was elected member of the 1971 Constitutional Convention and was appointed member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission. Rey E. Requejo