Krivenko v.

Register of Deeds
G.R. No. L-630
November 15, 1947
Facts:
Alenxander A. Krivenko, alien, bought a residential lot from the Magdalena
Estate, Inc., in December of 1941, the registration of which was interrupted by the war.
In May, 1945, he sought to accomplish said registration but was denied by the register
of deeds of Manila on the ground that, being an alien, he cannot acquire land in this
jurisdiction. Krivenko then brought the case to the fourth branch of the Court of First
Instance of Manila, and that court rendered judgment sustaining the refusal of the
register of deeds, from which Krivenko appealed to this Court. While the motion was
pending in this Court, came the new circular of the Department of Justice, instructing all
register of deeds to accept for registration all transfers of residential lots to aliens.
Issue:
Whether or not an alien, under our Constitution, may acquire residential
land.
Ruling:
No. Under the Constitution, aliens may not acquire private or public agricultural
lands, including residential lands, and, accordingly, judgment is affirmed, without costs.
Sec. 1, Art 13 of the Constitution mentions that all lands of the public domain are
classified into three groups, namely, agricultural, timber and mineral. From this, the
court held that in determining whether a parcel of land is agricultural, the test is not only
whether it is actually agricultural, but also its susceptibility to cultivation for agricultural
purposes. But whatever the test might be, the fact remains that at the time the
Constitution was adopted, lands of the public domain were classified in our laws and
jurisprudence into agricultural, mineral, and timber, and that the term "public agricultural
lands" was construed as referring to those lands that were not timber or mineral, and as
including residential lands. Therefore, the phrase "public agricultural lands" appearing in
section 1 of Article XIII of the Constitution must be construed as including residential
lands, and this is in conformity with a legislative interpretation given after the adoption of
the Constitution. Well known is the rule that "where the Legislature has revised a statute
after a Constitution has been adopted, such a revision is to be regarded as a legislative
construction that the statute so revised conforms to the Constitution."
Under section 1 of Article XIII of the Constitution, "natural resources, with the
exception of public agricultural land, shall not be alienated," and with respect to public
agricultural lands, their alienation is limited to Filipino citizens. But this constitutional
purpose conserving agricultural resources in the hands of Filipino citizens may easily be

defeated by the Filipino citizens themselves who may alienate their agricultural lands in
favor of aliens.
It is partly to prevent this result that section 5 is included in Article XIII, and it
reads as follows:
Sec. 5. Save in cases of hereditary succession, no private agricultural land will
be transferred or assigned except to individuals, corporations, or associations
qualified to acquire or hold lands of the public domain in the Philippines.
Sec. 5 is intended to insure the policy of nationalization contained in section 1.
Both sections must, therefore, be read together for they have the same purpose and the
same subject matter. It must be noticed that the persons against whom the prohibition is
directed in section 5 are the very same persons who under section 1 are disqualified "to
acquire or hold lands of the public domain in the Philippines." And the subject matter of
both sections is the same, namely, the non-transferability of "agricultural land" to aliens.
Since "agricultural land" under section 1 includes residential lots, the same technical
meaning should be attached to "agricultural land under section 5.
It is a rule of statutory construction that "a word or phrase repeated in a statute
will bear the same meaning throughout the statute, unless a different intention appears."
The only difference between "agricultural land" under section 5, is that the former is
public and the latter private. But such difference refers to ownership and not to the class
of land. The lands are the same in both sections and, for the conservation of the
national patrimony, what is important is the nature or class of the property regardless of
whether it is owned by the State or by its citizens.