MAXIMO CALALANG vs A. D. WILLIAMS, ET AL.

,
G.R. No. 47800 December 2, 1940
Doctrine: Social Justice

FACTS:

Pursuant to the power delegated to it by the Legislature, the Director

of Public Works promulgated rules and regulations pertaining to the
closure of Rosario Street and Rizal Avenue to traffic of animal-drawn
vehicles for a year from the date of the opening of the Colgante
Bridge to traffic.   

Among others, the petitioner Calalang, concerned citizen, aver that

the rules and regulations complained of:  

 infringe upon constitutional precept on the promotion of social

justice to insure the well being and economic security of all people; 
 and that it constitutes unlawful interference with legitimate
business or trade and abridge the right to personal liberty and
freedom of locomotion.  

ISSUE:  

Whether or not the rules and regulation promote social justice.  

HELD:

YES, it still promotes social justice. In enacting the said law, the
National Assembly was prompted by considerations of public
convenience and welfare.  

The promotion of Social Justice is to be adhered not through a

mistaken sympathy towards any given group (e.g. the poor - because
social justice is bringing the greatest good to the greatest number, not
necessarily just the poor like the drivers of the animal-drawn
vehicles).  

Social justice:   
: "neither communism, nor despotism, nor atomism, nor anarchy,"
but the humanization of laws and the equalization of social and
economic force by the State so that justice in its rational and
objectively secular conception may at least be approximated.      

: 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
time-honored principle of salus populi est suprema lex.      

: 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."  

RATIO:

(1) Liberty is a blessing without which life is a misery, but liberty

should not be made to prevail over authority because then society
will fall into anarchy.  

(2)The citizen should achieve the required balance of liberty and

authority in his mind through education and personal discipline so
that there may be established the resultant equilibrium, which means
peace and order and happiness of all.