WHEN ANDRES Narvasa was named chief justice of the Supreme Court in late 1991, a banquet was held in his honor at the ritzy Greenhills residence of a well-known businessman and restaurateur to whom he was related by marriage.

Hundreds of guests were invited. On one side of the sprawling lawn were the judges, justices and lawyers. On the other side, set apart by the swimming pool, were prominent businessmen and their wives, many of them Chinese-Filipino. The party, said one of the guests, former Supreme Court justice Jose Campos, "was an omen of things to come."

A practicing attorney for over 30 years before his appointment to the Court, Narvasa, those who know him say, is a sociable man who is seen enjoying himself at parties, playing golf with a retinue of lawyers and judges, and on occasion, dining with some of Manila's most controversial personages. Just a generation ago, Supreme Court justices were never seen in parties, hotel lobbies or restaurants where they may run into litigants or lawyers with pending cases. The idea, enshrined in the Code of Judicial Conduct, is that magistrates should "avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities."

The chief, however, seems to love the company of lawyers and his big, sociable clan. In recent years, his social activities have raised eyebrows in legal circles. But what has caused greater unease is his association with relatives and friends who are believed to be lobbying with the Court.

Narvasa's brother-in-law, lawyer Joaquin "Bobby" Yuseco, has been accused in a complaint filed in the Supreme Court of approaching justices on behalf of litigants. The chief's son, Gregorio II or Ogie, who has set up a law practice that senior lawyers say is far more profitable than could be explained by his otherwise average abilities, is also alleged to be approaching judges and justices on behalf of clients.

In addition, the chief's friendship with Evener Villasanta, a lawyer with Agcaoili & Associates who plays golf and travels regularly with Narvasa, is talked about in legal circles. In Manila's lawyering community, which is incestuous and tightly knit, Villasanta has gained a reputation as a conduit to the chief.

Although he is employed by a major law firm and is known as a competent lawyer, Villasanta is said to do business on his own, most times at the Manila Peninsula Hotel in Makati where he hangs out regularly. A former president of the Philippine Bar Association, he was named by the Supreme Court bar examiner for legal and judicial ethics in 1995, to the chagrin of Makati lawyers.

Villasanta was not shy about admitting his closeness to Narvasa. "He was my ninong, everybody knows that," he said. "There are few people whom he trusts ... I'm like a member of the family." Theirs, he said, is a decade-old friendship, which began when, as head of the Judiciary Sports Club, he was organizing tournaments for justices and asked Narvasa, an avid tennis player and golfer, to join them.

But the lawyer denied interceding for litigants in the Court. "I play tennis and golf with other justices like (Jose) Melo and Art (Panganiban)," he said. "Some of them are my kumpadre... But it doesn't mean that because you're a personal friend of a justice you can influence his judgment in the Supreme Court."

Narvasa seems to show little discomfort in this state of affairs. "Relatives, friends, some politicians do occasionally presume to talk to us about pending cases," he said, "but the invariable response is a noncommittal, 'We'll see or we'll look into it,' or some such vague remark, where they are not bluntly rebuffed."

But, he assured, "all cases are decided objectively, without any extraneous consideration whatsoever, whether it be family relation, past personal, business, professional, or other association, or otherwise."

Narvasa's behavior has disappointed those who remember the chief justice in the heady days after the Aquino assassination when he had acquired a gilt-edged reputation as the uncompromising general counsel of the fact-finding board assigned to investigate the killing. In that role, he set out the strategy for the inquiry and pieced together an account of the murder on which the board's majority report was based.

President Corazon Aquino named Narvasa to the Supreme Court in April 1986. Taking the counsel of her advisers, mainly human rights lawyers who fought the dictatorship, she tried to restore the respectability of the Court by weeding out Marcos flunkies and naming new justices.

Today, Narvasa heads a tarnished tribunal. In March, Eduardo R. Ceniza, senior partner and head of litigation in the country's biggest law firm, Sycip, Salazar, Hernandez and Gatmaytan, wrote a letter to the chief justice. "In my 37 years of practice I have never seen the image of the Supreme Court and the court system sink to such levels in the eyes of the business community," he said.

A lawyer for a major law firm points the finger at the chief. "The problem is that this Court, more than any other court, has no leadership. The chief justice has been unable to lead the Court," he said. "He wields the power of the purse, he gives the justices all their allowances, their per diems, etc. There can be no perks to the justices if he doesn't agree. The office of the judicial administrator is also under his control, so in the assignment of assistants, researchers, etc., he also has a say. But with all these, why can't the chief justice lead? He has no moral authority because his colleagues suspect him of doing all sorts of things. And vice-versa, he suspects his colleagues of all sorts of things."

The dominant view in the legal community is that corruption began with martial law, when the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, was forced by Marcos into subservience. With Marcos gone, many thought that the legal system would be reformed. But they were disappointed.

Today the interference comes from business interests which stand to lose billions in disputes being brought before the Court. In addition, Malacañang has also tried to pressure the Court in economic and political cases in which the Ramos administration has high stakes.

Ideally the Supreme Court should be able to insulate itself from business and political interests. But, said Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, who heads a Makati law firm: "The impression is still that decisions could be bought either because of material things or because of friendship or because of power...The Supreme Court has lost the element of being an independent arbiter of rights."

Critics put the blame partly on the appointment process. The Judicial and Bar Council picks out the candidates for justices, and the President makes the appointments based on its list. Malacañang's choices, however, have been less than inspired, with the premium placed on the potential malleability of appointees rather than on their integrity or brilliance, many in the legal profession say.

"The present composition does not make for an intellectual court," said respected lawyer and law professor Haydee Yorac.

But even the Palace has become frustrated with the Court, which has decided against the government in cases like the tax evasion suit filed against Lucio Tan, the sale of the Manila Hotel to a Malaysian company and the signature campaign to amend the Constitution.

In 1993, the Palace ordered the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to conduct a secret probe on the Court. "Prominent lawyers admitted to me that they actually paid off," said the senior NBI official assigned to the case. But apart from what the lawyers reported, he found no solid evidence of corruption.

The Palace, said a senior Malacañang official, conducted another probe in 1995, when Narvasa was accused of delaying the release of a decision banning the resumption of jai-alai to favor his eldest son, Andres Jr., who ran the jai-alai restaurant. The chief justice was also seen dining with controversial businessman Sy Pio Lato, the jai-alai franchise holder, while the Court was deliberating on the case.

In an interview, Narvasa said the meeting took place at the retirement party of his cousin. "There were hundreds of people there," said the chief, but he was put in the same table as Sy, who was also a guest.

When the Court ruled on the case, Narvasa inhibited himself but he did not release the decision immediately. He cited a constitutional provision saying that all decisions taken by the court en banc should be signed by every member who took part in the deliberations. One of the justices was then ill and could not sign.

Later, however, lawyers in an impeachment case filed against Narvasa were able to dig up 72 decisions made by the Court which were not signed by all the justices.

While the whiff of scandal wafted over the Court, Malacañang offered Narvasa a graceful exit: resign from the tribunal and take up any position in government he chooses. But, said a Palace official, the chief justice refused.

"I think there is a campaign to persuade the chief to leave the Court," said retired Justice Isagani Cruz, to whom Narvasa had confided the offer. "It was an attempt to ease him out and put somebody else."

But Narvasa is digging in, displaying the same defiance of Malacañang that won him so much praise during the Marcos era. In some cases, such defiance was lauded and seen as a valiant effort to stop Ramos supporters from monkeying around with the Constitution.

Unfortunately, the charges of corruption make the Court vulnerable to pressure. Narvasa's seeming imperviousness to the damage that has been done on the Court's image has also frustrated the legal community,

Neither has Narvasa done enough to clean up the lower courts, over which the Supreme Court has administrative supervision, lawyers say. "As far as we have seen," said Eduardo de los Angeles, a prominent Makati lawyer, "the chief justice has not taken any concrete steps to reform the judiciary."

In 1993, responding to widespread accusations, including those from Vice-President Joseph Estrada, about "hoodlums in robes," the Supreme Court created a committee composed of Narvasa and two retired justices to look into the allegations.

"We won't spare anyone, no matter who gets hurt," the chief justice vowed then. "We won't hesitate to let the hammer fall."

The committee worked for two months, spoke to over 70 witnesses and came out with a report that was widely criticized in the press as a whitewash. It recommended the investigation and filing of complaints against a few judges in Makati but refused to entertain complaints against Supreme Court justices because they were "nothing but gossip."

Narvasa chaired the committee, even if, among the complaints it investigated, was an anonymous paper which accused him and his kin and cronies of corruption.

The committee also exonerated Justice Hugo Gutierrez who had been accused of passing off as his own a decision supposedly written by the lawyer of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., a party to the lawsuit he was deciding. Even before the investigation, Narvasa had already cleared Gutierrez of any culpability. In an interview, he admitted that he even tried to dissuade the justice from resigning.

Responding to the public dissatisfaction with the report, 11 lawyers representing the country's top law associations wrote to Narvasa, asking the Supreme Court to create an independent commission to investigate cases against incompetent and corrupt jurists. The suggestion was ignored.

Four years later, most of the Makati judges probed by the Narvasa committee are back in trial courts, though not in Makati. One judge who was investigated was even promoted.

Meanwhile, the one and only formal complaint filed against a justice directly to the Supreme Court has been consigned to oblivion. In 1993, lawyers Ricardo Romulo and Eduardo de los Angeles filed a letter-complaint against Supreme Court Justice Rodolfo Nocon, Court of Appeals Justice Manuel Herrera and lawyer Bobby Yuseco, Narvasa's brother-in-law.

The lawyers presented documents showing that, as presiding justice of the Court of Appeals, Nocon, upon Yuseco's request, agreed to forego the raffle of a case involving a multi-million-peso real estate transaction and assign it to Herrera. The assignment of cases other than by raffle is highly irregular and violates the internal rules of the Court of Appeals.

The complaint was treated by the Supreme Court as an administrative charge, which to this day has not been heard. In November 1996, a decision was issued on the real estate case, with the majority of the justices ruling against the company whose lawyers dared challenge a Supreme Court justice.

The high court's decision was based largely on the controversial ruling made by the Court of Appeals. Among the key pieces of evidence cited in both rulings was a letter from one of the parties. The two decisions omitted from the letter a crucial paragraph that would have cast doubt on the soundness of the rulings.

Seventeen years after the case was first filed at the Manila trial court, the value of the disputed property has gone up to over P400 million. But both the appellate and high courts had ruled that it be sold to the winning party for P11.3 million, the price of the property in 1978.

In the meantime, Nocon had retired. Among the last few rulings he penned was on a land dispute in which he decided against the family of one of the lawyers who filed the administrative complaint.

The lawyer filed a motion for reconsideration and tried to get Nocon to inhibit himself from the case, which had been languishing in the Court for years when it was finally decided. But the Second Division headed by Narvasa did not act on the motion to inhibit Nocon, saying that the papers pertaining to the inhibition had been misplaced. By the time the papers were found, the Division had already turned down the motion for reconsideration.