as one of her role models. Department of Justice Carpio Morales joined the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1971 as Special Assistant to then Justice Secretary Vicente Abad Santos, her former law professor and long-time Dean of the UP College of Law. At the time, she reviewed resolutions of state prosecutors in criminal complaints that were ultimately for the Secretary. According to her, her experience at the DOJ taught her “to marshal facts correctly. The most difficult part of deciding the case is marshaling the facts. The moment that you can marshal them, in the best way you can, then it’s just a matter of applying the law, right or wrong.” Carpio Morales mentioned that it was hard for her to find role models among women lawyers, because there was so few of them. However, she found her role models at the DOJ, whom she described as "...women of integrity, of competence, of uncrackable reputation.” These included Lorna Lombos dela Fuente, then Assistant Chief of the Legal Division of the Department, who became a Court of Appeals Justice, and Assistant Chief State Counsel Minerva Gonzaga Reyes, who become a Supreme Court Justice. She worked at the DOJ for almost 12 years. Lower Courts In 1983, former President Ferdinand Marcos appointed Carpio Morales as a Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge in Pili, Camarines Sur. President Corazon Aquino, Marcos' successor, then appointed Carpio-Morales as a Pasay RTC judge in 1986. In 1994, then President Fidel V. Ramos appointed her to the Court of Appeals, where she eventually headed the 7th Division as Associate Justice. Supreme Court In 2002, upon the unanimous endorsement of the members of the Judicial and Bar Council, Carpio Morales was appointed to the Supreme Court (SC) as Supreme Court Associate Justice by then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. She was only the tenth woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court. In De Castro v Judicial and Bar Council (2010), the question of whether or not then-President Arroyo was allowed to appoint the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was brought to the fore, given that then-outgoing Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno was retiring within the period that the 1987 Philippine Constitution prohibited the President from making appointments to executive positions. Three of the Supreme Court justices recused themselves from the case, two said that case was premature, and seven voted to allow the President to choose the