On March 11, 2025, the world watched as former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested and surrendered to the International Criminal Court (ICC), marking an unprecedented moment in the intersection of domestic and international law. The operation, executed by the Philippine National Police on the strength of an Interpol "Red Notice," was the first time a Filipino—let alone a former head of state—was handed over to an international tribunal. Duterte faces accusations of presiding over a bloody anti-drug campaign that, according to various estimates, claimed between 6,000 and 30,000 civilian lives. The arrest and subsequent transfer to The Hague’s Scheveningen Prison have triggered a legal and political maelstrom in the Philippines, with ripples reaching the highest levels of government and the judiciary.
According to SunStar Philippines, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is now bracing for the possibility that the ICC may issue a similar arrest warrant against former Philippine National Police chief and current Senator Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa, who was a key architect of Duterte’s controversial drug war. At a press conference on November 11, 2025, Chief State Counsel Dennis Arvin Chan clarified that, as of that date, no such warrant had been received. However, he laid out the two possible legal paths should a warrant arrive: extradition or surrender. "Theoretically speaking, the faster approach would be surrender because if we go through the extradition route, there will be a request for extradition coming in through the Department of Foreign Affairs. It will be transmitted to the DOJ for evaluation. We will file it in the proper trial court," Chan explained.
But the issue is anything but straightforward. The legal framework for extraditing Filipinos abroad has traditionally relied on Presidential Decree No. 1069, dating back to 1977. This law, however, only applies to requests from foreign governments, not international tribunals like the ICC. Duterte’s case thus exposed a gap in Philippine law—a gap that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. filled by exercising what legal scholars call the "executive direct effect" of international law. Rather than sending the matter through the courts, President Marcos made the political decision to surrender Duterte directly to the ICC, sidestepping the usual judicial process. This move, as described by independent international law scholar Romel Regalado Bagares in The Philippine Daily Inquirer, allowed international law to "pierce the municipal legal order as a sword would, where municipal law would otherwise have set the rules of recognition."
This was not a decision made in isolation. A Senate investigation led by Senator Imee Marcos revealed that "Operation Pursuit" was executed through backdoor coordination between the Philippine administration, the ICC, and Interpol. The arrangement was classified as "ad hoc" under Article 87(5)(a) of the ICC’s Rome Statute, which allows for informal cooperation between the court and non-state parties. The Triffterer/Ambos Commentary on the Rome Statute, widely regarded as authoritative, notes that such cooperation "can either take the form of a legally binding cooperation regime or retain a wholly informal character."
Yet, the story doesn’t end with Duterte’s arrest. In the wake of his detention, his children—Sebastian and Veronica—filed a consolidated petition for habeas corpus before the Supreme Court, demanding that their father be presented in court and the legality of his detention be scrutinized. Davao Representative Paolo Duterte also filed a petition for habeas corpus, certiorari, and prohibition, seeking his father’s release and a halt to any further cooperation with the ICC and Interpol. These petitions have placed the Supreme Court at the center of a constitutional debate over the limits of executive power, the reach of international law, and the protection of individual rights.
Chief State Counsel Chan acknowledged the complexity of the situation, stating, "As a matter of practicality or propriety, we may have to wait for the SC to decide on the issue because our position, that is the one being questioned by the camp of the former President." He added, "There are many things that need to be weighed. There are many aspects that need to be looked at from different angles." The DOJ’s decision on whether to surrender or extradite Dela Rosa, should an ICC warrant materialize, may well hinge on the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Duterte habeas corpus cases.
Underlying these legal maneuvers is a broader tension between national sovereignty and international accountability. The ICC’s Rome Statute, specifically Article 59, requires a "custodial State" to bring an arrested individual before a domestic court for what amounts to extradition proceedings. However, because the Philippines never passed a law for ICC cooperation after joining the Rome Statute in 2011, the government was forced to improvise. As Bagares points out, "facing a non liquet, the Marcos administration, at great political risk, made a renvoi, referring the Duterte arrest and surrender back to the rules of international law."
For Dela Rosa and others under ICC investigation, the legal landscape is even murkier. The Supreme Court’s new 2025 extradition procedures remain rooted in the traditional inter-state framework and do not account for requests from international tribunals. This means the Court must draft separate rules under its constitutional rulemaking powers to handle ICC cases. Republic Act No. 9851, the International Humanitarian Law Act, does allow for "reverse complementarity"—the referral of cases already investigated by a foreign or international court back to the Philippines—but implementing this in practice will require new judicial guidelines.
Chan also emphasized the importance of international relationships, noting, "We live in a world of interconnected countries and nations... Even we may not be part of the ICC anymore, there is still that principle of reciprocity that governs between relations among nations and in fact, reciprocity and comity, so while legally hindi tayo ma-compel ay meron din tayong tinitimbang on the diplomatic implication." In other words, while the Philippines may not be legally bound to comply with the ICC, the diplomatic and reputational consequences of refusing to cooperate cannot be ignored.
The interplay between executive discretion and judicial oversight in these high-profile cases is redefining how the Philippines navigates its obligations to international law. The executive’s willingness to act decisively in Duterte’s case has set a new precedent, but the judiciary’s response—particularly in the pending habeas corpus petitions—will shape the country’s approach to future ICC requests. As the world watches, the Philippines finds itself at a crossroads, balancing the demands of sovereignty, justice, and its place in the international community.
With the fate of Senator Dela Rosa and others potentially hanging in the balance, all eyes are now on the Supreme Court, whose decisions in the coming months could determine not just the course of individual cases but the very nature of Philippine engagement with global accountability mechanisms.
