Garcia was born on October 20, 1937. The youngest of four children and the only son of Juan Garcia and Benedicta Castillo, both illiterates, in the remote barrio of Concordia in Alitagtag municipality of Batangas province.
Education
Starting his education at the P. Gomez Elementary School (Manila), and thereafter at the Arellano (Public) High School (Manila), he qualified for admission to the University of the Philippines College of Law. A product of the public school system, he graduated from the UP in 1961. He obtained a post-graduate degree in public administration as a government scholar from the University of Santo Tomas in 1967.
Career
Honing his skills in the legal profession by serving as the assistant at the Macapagal Alafriz & Mutuc Law Offices, he went on to serve the government, first as Legal Office, then as junior presidential staff assistant in the Legal Office of Malacanang, and thereafter, as solicitor in the Office of the Solicitor General, at that time headed by his former college professor, Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza. He first sat at the bench as City Judge of Caloocan. He served for more than a decade in that capacity, and having won a Judge of the Year award, he rose to the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Angeles City and later to the RTC in Caloocan. President Corazon Aquino later appointed him as assistant executive secretary for legal affairs. He was then appointed as a judge of the Philippine Court of Appeals where he served for almost fourteen years until 2004, first as an associate justice, then as presiding justice of that court, a position he held twice – from March 14 to July 29, 2001, and April 11, 2002, to April 8, 2003. In October 2004, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appointed him as associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, the court's 156th justice.
Death
He died on October 15, 2013.
Books
A Study of the Philippine Constitution. By Perfecto V. Fernandez, Jose A.R. Melo, Cancio G. Garcia, Aloysius C. Alday (1974)
