COLLEGE OF LAW

DE LA SALLE UNIVERSITY
AGRARIAN & SOCIAL LEGISLATION
1st Semester, SY 2015-2016
Atty. Charisma I. Nolasco
Email: charm_upmla@yahoo.com

I.

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This subject is divided into two (2) parts. The first part intends to familiarize the
students with the basic concepts and legal foundations in the implementation of
agrarian reform in the Philippines. The second part of the course will be a quick
overview of laws promoting public welfare with relevance to labor, and
jurisprudence applying and construing the same.

II.

PREREQUISITE COURSE
None

III.

COURSE MATERIALS
A. Required Course/Reference Materials
1987 Philippine Constitution
R.A. No. 6657 (as amended by R.A. Nos. 7881, 7905, 8532 & 9700)
P.D. No. 27 (as amended by E.O. No. 228)
R.A. No. 3844 (as amended by P.D. Nos. 251, 444, 1039 & 1817, R.A. Nos. 6389,
6557, 7907 & 9700)
R.A. No. 8282 (Social Security Act of 1997)
R.A. No. 8291 (Government Service Insurance System Act of 1997)
R.A. No 7875 (as amended by R.A. Nos. 9241 & 10606)
B. Recommended Textbook
Ungos, Jr. & Ungos III. AGRARIAN LAW AND SOCIAL LEGISLATION (2013)

IV.

COURSE OBJECTIVES
At the end of the course, the students will be able to comprehend the laws and
relevant jurisprudence interpreting and applying Philippine agrarian and social
legislations.

V.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS
A. Class Preparation
Students must read the assigned materials. Class recitations will be regularly
conducted using the Socratic method to enable them to understand the rationale
of the law and thereafter resolve fact situations by applying the relevant laws
and legal principles. The class shall observe a closed notes policy.
B. Attendance

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Regular and punctual attendance is required. The policy observed by the College
will be adopted in considering a student as automatically dropped due to
absences. Attendance will be checked before the start of the class.
C. Grading Criteria and Evaluation
The students shall be graded as follows:
Attendance
Recitation/Quizzes
Midterm Examinations
Final Examinations
Total

10%
20%
30%
40%
100%

Both the midterm and final examinations will be in written form and will consist
of both objective and essay questions. The honor code will be adopted.
The assigned grades are final and shall not be changed/altered except for
mathematical/clerical errors.
VI.

COURSE ASSIGNMENTS
The attached Course Outline provides in detail the covered topics for each
meeting, including additional reading materials. The enumerated reference
materials may be subject to change, most especially in cases of landmark
decisions of the Supreme Court, as well as recent laws, rules and regulations and
other issuances promulgated by the legislative or the executive branches.

Atty. C.I. Nolasco

AGRARIAN & SOCIAL LEGISLATION

1st Semester, SY 2015-2016
Sat. (7-9 p.m.)
I.

GENERAL CONCEPTS

A. Sources
i. Sections 9, 10, 11 & 21, Article II, 1987 Constitution

SECTION 9. The State shall promote a just and dynamic social order that will
ensure the prosperity and independence of the nation and free the people from
poverty through policies that provide adequate social services, promote full
employment, a rising standard of living, and an improved quality of life for all.
SECTION 10. The State shall promote social justice in all phases of national
development.
SECTION 11. The State values the dignity of every human person and
guarantees full respect for human rights.
SECTION 21. The State shall promote comprehensive rural development and
agrarian reform.
ii. Sections 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11 & 12, Article XIII, 1987 Constitution

Social Justice and Human Rights

SECTION 1. The Congress shall give highest priority to the enactment of
measures that protect and enhance the right of all the people to human dignity,
reduce social, economic, and political inequalities, and remove cultural
inequities by equitably diffusing wealth and political power for the common
good.
To this end, the State shall regulate the acquisition, ownership, use, and
disposition of property and its increments.
SECTION 2. The promotion of social justice shall include the commitment to
create economic opportunities based on freedom of initiative and self-reliance.
Agrarian and Natural Resources Reform
SECTION 4. The State shall, by law, undertake an agrarian reform program
founded on the right of farmers and regular farmworkers, who are landless, to
own directly or collectively the lands they till or, in the case of other
farmworkers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof. To this end, the State
shall encourage and undertake the just distribution of all agricultural lands,
subject to such priorities and reasonable retention limits as the Congress may
prescribe, taking into account ecological, developmental, or equity

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considerations, and subject to the payment of just compensation. In

determining retention limits, the State shall respect the right of small
landowners. The State shall further provide incentives for voluntary landsharing.
SECTION 6. The State shall apply the principles of agrarian reform or
stewardship, whenever applicable in accordance with law, in the disposition or
utilization of other natural resources, including lands of the public domain under
lease or concession suitable to agriculture, subject to prior rights, homestead
rights of small settlers, and the rights of indigenous communities to their
ancestral lands.
The State may resettle landless farmers and farmworkers in its own agricultural
estates which shall be distributed to them in the manner provided by law.
SECTION 7. The State shall protect the rights of subsistence fishermen,
especially of local communities, to the preferential use of local marine and
fishing resources, both inland and offshore. It shall provide support to such
fishermen through appropriate technology and research, adequate financial,
production, and marketing assistance, and other services. The State shall also
protect, develop, and conserve such resources. The protection shall extend to
offshore fishing grounds of subsistence fishermen against foreign intrusion.
Fishworkers shall receive a just share from their labor in the utilization of marine
and fishing resources.
SECTION 8. The State shall provide incentives to landowners to invest the
proceeds of the agrarian reform program to promote industrialization,
employment creation, and privatization of public sector enterprises. Financial
instruments used as payment for their lands shall be honored as equity in
enterprises of their choice.
Health
SECTION 11. The State shall adopt an integrated and comprehensive
approach to health development which shall endeavor to make essential goods,
health and other social services available to all the people at affordable cost.
There shall be priority for the needs of the underprivileged sick, elderly,
disabled, women, and children. The State shall endeavor to provide free
medical care to paupers.

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SECTION 12. The State shall establish and maintain an effective food and drug
regulatory system and undertake appropriate health manpower development
and research, responsive to the countrys health needs and problems.
iii. Social Justice
Read:

Calalang v. Williams, G.R. No. 47800, December 2, 1940

Social justice is "neither communism, nor despotism, nor atomism, nor anarchy," but the humanization of
laws and the equalization of social and economic forces by the State so that justice in its rational and
objectively secular conception may at least be approximated. Social justice means the promotion of the
welfare of all the people, the adoption by the Government of measures calculated to insure economic
stability of all the competent elements of society, through the maintenance of a proper economic and social
equilibrium in the interrelations of the members of the community, constitutionally, through the adoption of
measures legally justifiable, or extra constitutionally, through the exercise of powers underlying the
existence of all governments on the timehonored principle of salus populi est suprema lex. Social justice,
therefore, must be founded on the recognition of the necessity of interdependence among divers and diverse
units of a society and of the protection that should be equally and evenly extended to all groups as a
combined force in our social and economic life, consistent with the fundamental and paramount objective of
the state of promoting the health, comfort, and quiet of all persons, and of bringing about "the greatest
good to the greatest number"

Asso. of Small Landowners v. Sec. of Agrarian Reform,G.R. No. 78742,

July 14, 1989

It is only where the owner is unwilling to sell, or cannot accept the

price or other conditions offered by the vendee, that the power of
eminent domain will come into play to assert the paramount
authority of the State over the interests of the property owner.
Private rights must then yield to the irresistible demands of the
public interest on the timehonored justification, as in the case of
the police power, that the welfare of the people is the supreme law.
B. Definition
i. Agrarian

Relating to land or to the ownership or division of land

ii. Agrarian law
Laws regulating the distribution of public agricultural lands, large estates,
and regulation of the relationship between landowner and farmer who
works on the land. It embraces all laws that govern and regulate the rights
and relationship over agricultural lands between landowners, tenants,
lessees or agricultural workers
iii. Agrarian reform
(a) Agrarian Reform means redistribution of lands, regardless of crops or fruits produced, to
farmers and regular farmworkers who are landless, irrespective of tenurial arrangement, to
include the totality of factors and support services designed to lift the economic status of
the beneficiaries and all other arrangements alternative to the physical redistribution of
lands, such as production or profit-sharing, labor administration, and the distribution of
shares of stocks, which will allow beneficiaries to receive a just share of the fruits of the
lands they work.

Covers not only distribution of lands but also labor

administration, profit sharing, and stock distribution. To
confine agrarian reform to land distribution only is not

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feasible because there is not enough agricultural land that

can be distributed to every farmer or regular farmworker.
Agrarian Reform is considered wider than land reform. The
term comprises not only land reform (such as the reform of
tenure, production and supporting services structures) but
also the reform and development of complementary
institutional framework such as the administrative agencies
of the national government, rural educational and social
welfare institutions and not limited simply to the question of
the relationships of the farmers to the land.
It encompasses all programs designed to bring about
improvement in all the institutions surrounding farm life, as
well as companion measures necessary to make the work of
the tenant, farm worker, and owner cultivator successful.
It means remedying not only the defect in the distribution
and use of land but also and especially, the accompanying
human relations regarding land, including economic, social
and political relations.
It is concerned not only with the farmer and the land he tills
but also with the community he lives in.
iv. Agricultural land
(b) Agricultural Land refers to land devoted to agricultural activity as defined in this Act and not
classified as mineral, forest, residential, commercial or industrial land.
Contemplateslandsthatarearableandsuitableforfarming

v. Social Legislation

any act passed by the legislature or a decree issued by the government for the
removal of certain social evils or for the improvement of social conditions or with
the aim of bringing about social reform.
No precise definition, so broad that it covers labor laws, agrarian laws and welfare
laws. Emphasis is on the aspect of general public good and social welfare.
Essentially, the laws or statutes enacted pursuant to the social justice clause of the
Constitution.
C. History of agrarian reform laws
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, AGRARIAN LAW & SOCIAL LEGISLATION, pp. 1-6
Secs., 3 (a) & (c), R.A. No. 6657 (As amended)
Holy Trinity Realty & Devt. Corp. v. dela Cruz, G.R. No. 200454,
October 22, 2014
II.

AGRARIAN REFORM
A. Definition
i.
Agricultural activity
ii.
Agrarian dispute
iii.
Idle/Abandoned Land
iv.
Farmer
v.
Farmworker

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a. Regular
b. Seasonal
c. Others
Read:

Sec. 3, R.A. 6657, as amended

DAR v. Sutton, G.R. No. 162070, October 19, 2005

We find that the impugned A.O. is invalid as it contravenes the

Constitution. The A.O. sought to regulate livestock farms by
including them in the coverage of agrarian reform and prescribing
a maximum retention limit for their ownership. However, the
deliberations of the 1987 Constitutional Commission show a clear
intent to exclude, inter alia, all lands exclusively devoted to
livestock, swine and poultryraising. The Court clarified in the Luz
Farms case that livestock, swine and poultryraising are industrial
activities and do not fall within the definition of agriculture or
agricultural activity. The raising of livestock, swine and poultry
is different from crop or tree farming. It is an industrial, not an
agricultural, activity.
The subsequent case of Natalia Realty, Inc. v. DAR reiterated our
ruling in the Luz Farms case. In Natalia Realty, the Court held
that industrial, commercial and residential lands are not covered
by the CARL. We stressed anew that while Section 4 of R.A. No.
6657 provides that the CARL shall cover all public and private
agricultural lands, the term agricultural land does not include
lands classified as mineral, forest, residential, commercial or
industrial. Thus, in Natalia Realty, even portions of the Antipolo
Hills Subdivision, which are arable yet still undeveloped, could not
be considered as agricultural lands subject to agrarian reform as
these lots were already classified as residential lands.
Milestone Farms v. Office of the President, G.R. No. 182332, February
23, 2011
Islanders CARP-Farmers Beneficiaries v. LADECO, G.R. No. 159089,
May 3, 2006
Del Monte Phils. v. Sangunay, G.R. No. 180013, January 31, 2011
People v. Vanzuela, G.R. No. 178266, July 21, 2008
Monsanto v. Zerna, G.R. No. 142501, December 7, 2001
B. Scope

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Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 13-15, 32-38

Secs. 4, 9 & 10, R.A. 6657, as amended
P.D. No. 27, as amended
Holy Trinity Realty & Devt. Corp. v. dela Cruz, supra

C. Implementation
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 38-43

Secs. 5, 7, & 11 R.A. 6657, as amended
Sec. 30, R.A. 9700

D. Retention Limits
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 15-24, 157-158

Secs. 6, 6-a & 6-b, 70, R.A. 6657, as amended
P.D. No. 27
Heirs of Aurelio Reyes v. Garilao, G.R. No. 136466, November 25,

2009
Roman Catholic Archbishop of Caceres v. Sec. of Agrarian Reform,
G.R. No. 139285, December 21, 2007
DAR v. Sutton, supra
Danan v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 132759, October 25, 2005
E. Tenurial arrangements and relations
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra pp. 43-45, 88-89, 145, 160-176

Secs. 12, 13, 32, R.A. 6657, as amended
Secs. 4-21, 23-38, R.A. No. 3844
Galope v. Bugarin, G.R. No. 185669, February 1, 2012
Tarona v. CA, G.R. No. 170182, June 18, 2009
Reyes v. Reyes, G.R. No. 140164, September 6, 2002
Verde v. Macapagal, G.R. No. 151342, March 4, 2008
Rupa v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 80129, January 25, 2000
Valencia v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 122363, April 29, 2003

F. Land distribution
i.
Registration
Read:
ii.

Land acquisition
Read:

iii.

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 46-50, 61

Sec. 16, 20, R.A. 6657, as amended

Just compensation
a) Valuation
b) Modes of compensation
Read:

iv.

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 45-46

Secs. 15-16, R.A. No. 6657, as amended

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 50-60

Secs. 17-29, R.A. 6657, as amended
Asso. of Small Landowners v. Sec. of Agrarian Reform, supra
Heirs of Tantoco v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 149621, May 5, 2006
Landbank v. Obias, G.R. No. 184406, March 14, 2012

Distribution
a) Beneficiaries
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 63-65

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Sec. 22, R.A. 6657, as amended

b) Order of priority
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, p. 66

Sec. 22-A, R.A. 6657, as amended

c) Award ceiling
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 66-68, 71-74

Secs. 23, 25 R.A. 6657, as amended

d) Payment
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 61-62, 75-76, 90-91

Secs. 21, 26, 33, 34, R.A. 6657, as amended

e) Corporate Landownership
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 79-88

Secs. 29-31, R.A. 6657, as amended
Hacienda Luisita v. PARC, G.R. No. 171101, July 2011

f) Special areas of concern

Read:
v.

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 100-102

Sec. 40, R.A. 6657, as amended

Ownership/Transfer
a) Title/Tenurial instrument
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 68-71,

Sec. 24, R.A. 6657, as amended

b) Rights and limitations

Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 76-78

Secs. 27, 28, 66-67, R.A. 6657, as amended
P.D. No. 27

c) Conversion
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 133-139

Secs. 65, 65-A, R.A. 6657, as amended

d) Bank mortgage
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 143-145

Sec. 71, R.A. 6657, as amended

G. Institutional mechanisms
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 102-110

Secs. 41-49, R.A. 6657, as amended

H. Jurisdiction & Remedies

Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 110-130

Secs. 50-62, 68, R.A. 6657, as amended

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I. Prohibited Acts/Omissions
Read:

III.

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 145-150

Secs. 73-74 R.A. 6657, as amended
P.D. No. 27
Secs. 27, 31, R.A. No. 3844

SOCIAL LEGISLATION
A Social Security Act of 1997 (R.A. No. 8282)
a Definitions (Sec. 8)
i Dependents
ii Employment
iii Beneficiaries
iv Contingency
b Compulsory & Voluntary members (Sec. 9)
c Coverage (Secs. 10-11-A)
d Benefits (Secs. 12-14A)
i Retirement
ii Maternity
iii Permanent disability
e Failure to remit (Sec. 22)
f Nature of fund
g Jurisdiction and Remedies (Secs. 4 &5)
Read:

Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 348-368

SSS v. Azote, G.R. No. 209741, April 15, 2015
Dy Caico v. SSS, G.R. No. 161357, November 30, 2009
Ortega v. Social Security Commission, 555 SCRA 353
SSC v. Rizal Poultry and Livestock Corp., G.R. No. 167050, June 1, 2011
Accident, work-related

Read:
j.

Hinoguin v. ECC, G.R. No. 8430, April 17, 1989

i. Proximate Cause
Act of Ministration
Read:
Visayan Stevedore Transport Company v. Workmens
Compensation
Commission, G.R. No. L-11875, December 28, 1973
k. Coming and Going rule
Read:

Alano v. ECC, G.R. No. L-48594, March 16, 1988

Lazo v. ECC, G.R. No. 78617, June 18, 1990

l. Official Functions
m. 24-Hour Duty
Read:

GSIS v. Alegre, G.R. No. 128524, April 20, 1999

Valeriano v. ECC, G.R. No. 136200, June 8, 2000

n. Compensability (illness)
a Proof
b Work-connected illness
c Cause of illness is unknown; Increased Risk Doctrine
Read:

GSIS v. Capacite, G.R. No. 199780, September 24, 2014

GSIS v. Calumpiano, G.R. No. 196102, November 26, 2014

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B National Health Insurance Act of 1995 (as amended by R.A. No. 9241; R.A.
No. 10606)
1. Principles (Sec. 2)
a. Equity
b. Responsiveness
c. Social Solidarity
d. Fiduciary Responsibility
e. Informed Choice
f. Compulsory Coverage
g. Cost-sharing
2. Definition (Sec.4)
a. Beneficiary
b. Capitation
c. Contribution
d. Dependent
e. Health Care Provider
3. Coverage (sec. 6, as amended)
4. Change of Residence (sec. 9)
5. Exclusion and Benefits (Secs. 11 and 12)
6. Quasi-judicial powers (sec. 17)
7. Grievance and Appeal (secs. 39-43; secs. 98-136, IRR of R.A. No. 7875, as
amended)
Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 335-347
C Government Service Insurance System Act of 1997 (P.D. 1146, as amended
by R.A. 8291)
a Definitions (Sec. 2)
i Member
ii Dependent
iii Primary and Secondary beneficiaries
b Membership (Secs. 3 & 4)
c Benefits (Secs. 9-27)
i Rehabilitation services
ii Temporary Total Disability
iii Permanent Total Disability
iv Permanent Partial Disability
v Death/Funeral Benefits
vi Life Insurance
d

Claims and Disputes (Secs. 28-32)

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 369-381

D Portability (R.A. No. 7699)

Atty. C.I. Nolasco