Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
File No. 5
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• In the regular course, the regional trial courts and the Supreme
Court have concurrent jurisdiction to hear and decide petitions for
quo warranto (as well as certiorari, prohibition and mandamus),
and a basic deference to the hierarchy of courts impels a filing of
such petitions in the lower tribunals. However, for special and
important reasons or for exceptional and compelling
circumstances, as in the present case, the Supreme Court has
allowed exceptions to this doctrine. In fact, original petitions for
certiorari, prohibition, mandamus and quo warranto assailing acts
of legislative officers like the Senate President and the Speaker of
the House have been recognized as exceptions to this rule. In this
country the judicial supremacy is established, with the Supreme
Court as the final arbiter, to see that no one branch or agency of
the government transcends the Constitution, not only in justiceable
but political questions as well (Defensor-Santiago vs. Guingona, GR
134577, Nov. 18, 1998).
• The Court's power of judicial review is conferred on the judicial
branch of the government in Section 1, Article VIII of our present
1987 Constitution. The "moderating power" to "determine the
proper allocation of powers" of the different branches of
government and "to direct the course of government along
constitutional channels" is inherent in all courts as a necessary
consequence of the judicial power itself, which is "the power of the
court to settle actual controversies involving rights which are
legally demandable and enforceable." The separation of powers is a
fundamental principle in our system of government. It obtains not
through express provision but by actual division in our Constitution.
Each department of the government has exclusive cognizance of
matters within its jurisdiction, and is supreme within its own
sphere. But it does not follow from the fact that the three powers
are to be kept separate and distinct that the Constitution intended
them to be absolutely unrestrained and independent of each other.
The Constitution has provided for an elaborate system of checks
and balances to secure coordination in the workings of the various
departments of the government. And the judiciary in turn, with the
Supreme Court as the final arbiter, effectively checks the other
departments in the exercise of its power to determine the law, and
hence to declare executive and legislative acts void if violative of
the Constitution (Francisco vs. House of Representatives, GR 160261, Nov.
10, 2003).
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• The Court held that the question whether or not the Senate rule
violated the US Constitution was nonjusticiable since the
impeachment clause expressly granted that the “Senate shall have
sole Power to try any impeachment.” The clause laid out specific
regulations that were to be followed and as long as those
guidelines were observed the court would not rule upon the validity
of other senate procedures regarding impeachment. Chief Justice
William Rehnquist observed that while the Supreme Court was the
“ultimate interpreter of the Constitution,” a matter would be
deemed nonjusticiable when there was “a constitutional
commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department (Nixon
vs. US, 506 US 224).”
• Without oral argument, the divided justices found that the case
was not justiciable. Rehnquist lead a group of four (4) others who
believed that the issue involved a political question, namely, how
the President and Congress would conduct the nation's foreign
affairs. Justice Powell did not find the case ripe for judicial review.
Congress had not formally challenged the Carter's authority,
technically there was no conflict for the Court to resolve (Goldwater
vs. Carter, 444 US 996, 62 L.Ed.2d 428).
• It is now an ancient rule that the valid source of a statute —
Presidential Decrees are of such nature — may be contested by
one who will sustain a direct injury as a result of its enforcement. At
the instance of taxpayers, laws providing for the disbursement of
public funds may be enjoined, upon the theory that the expenditure
of public funds by an officer of the State for the purpose of
executing an unconstitutional act constitutes a misapplication of
such funds. The interest of the petitioners as taxpayers in the
lawful expenditure of these amounts of public money sufficiently
clothes them with that personality to litigate the validity of the
Decrees appropriating said funds.
Political questions are neatly associated with the wisdom, not the
legality of a particular act. Where the vortex of the controversy
refers to the legality or validity of the contested act, that matter is
definitely justiciable or non-political. What is in the heels of the
Court is not the wisdom of the act of the incumbent President in
proposing amendments to the Constitution, but his constitutional
authority to perform such act or to assume the power of a
constituent assembly. Whether the amending process confers on
the President that power to propose amendments is therefore a
downright justiciable question. Should the contrary be found, the
actuation of the President would merely he a brutum fulmen. If the
Constitution provides how it may be amended, the judiciary as the
interpreter of that Constitution, can declare whether the procedure
followed or the authority assumed was valid or not.
The Court does not agree with the posture of the respondent
COMELEC that the issue involved in the present petition is a
political question beyond the jurisdiction of this Court to review. As
the leading case of Tañada vs. Cuenco put it, political questions are
concerned with “issues dependent upon the wisdom, not legality of
a particular measure.” The issue raised in the present petition does
not merely concern the wisdom of the assailed resolution but
focuses on its alleged disregard for applicable statutory and
constitutional provisions. In other words, that the petitioner and the
petitioners-in-intervention are questioning the legality of the
respondent COMELEC’s administrative issuance will not preclude
this Court from exercising its power of judicial review to determine
whether or not there was grave abuse of discretion amounting to
lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of the respondent
COMELEC in issuing Resolution No. 6712. Indeed, administrative
issuances must not override, supplant or modify the law, but must
remain consistent with the law they intend to carry out. When the
grant of power is qualified, conditional or subject to limitations, the
issue of whether the prescribed qualifications or conditions have
been met or the limitations respected, is justiciable – the problem
being one of legality or validity, not its wisdom. In the present
petition, the Court must pass upon the petitioner’s contention that
Resolution No. 6712 does not have adequate statutory or
constitutional basis.
3. PRESUMPTION OF CONSTITUTIONALITY
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• The time-honored doctrine is that all laws (PD No. 771 included) are
presumed valid and constitutional until or unless otherwise ruled by
this Court. Not only this; Article XVIII Section 3 of the Constitution
states:
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The Court agrees with the Solicitor General (Fernandez vs. Torres, 215
SCRA 489).
i) Ripeness
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ii) Mootness
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i)
Conventional Standing
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ii) Representative
Standing
iii)Jus Tertii
standing
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public
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v) Standing of
members of Congress
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Exceptions :
a. criminal cases – at any time at the discretion of
the court;
b. civil cases – at any stage of the proceedings if
necessary for the determination of the case itself;
c. every case (except where there is estoppel) –
at any stage if it involves the jurisdiction of the court.
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Realizes that in declaring a law or rule null and void, undue harshness
and resulting unfairness must be avoided.
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• The strict view considers a legislative enactment which is
declared unconstitutional as being, for all legal intents and
purposes, a total nullity, and it is deemed as if had never existed.
Here, of course, we refer to the law itself being per se repugnant to
the Constitution. It is not always the case, however, that a law is
constitutionally faulty per se. Thus, it may well be valid in its
general import, but invalid in its application to certain factual
situations. To exemplify, an otherwise valid law may be held
unconstitutional only insofar as it is allowed to operate
retrospectively such as, in pertinent cases, when it vitiates
contractually vested rights. A judicial declaration of invalidity, it is
also true, may not necessarily obliterate all the effects and
consequences of a void act occurring prior to such a declaration.
Thus, in our decisions on the moratorium laws, 6 we have been
constrained to recognize the interim effects of said laws prior to
their declaration of unconstitutionality, but there we have likewise
been unable to simply ignore strong considerations of equity and
fair play. So also, even as a practical matter, a situation that may
aptly be described as fait accompli may no longer be open for
further inquiry, let alone to be unsettled by a subsequent
declaration of nullity of a governing statute (Republic vs. CA, GR 79732,
Nov. 8, 1993).
6. RELATIVE CONSTITUTIONALITY
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