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Chapter 7 Agabin Legal System of The Philippines
Chapter 7 Agabin Legal System of The Philippines
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Chapter Seven
Historical Backeround
world power.3 They were the warmongers who cried for war
with Spain, aided by two American publishers, William
Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, who used their papers to
goad the American nation into war. At that time, Queen Maria
Cristina of Spain realized that her country would be beaten by
the superior American force if war should break out, and she
and her cabinet sought conciliation to avoid certain defeat. But
the majority of the Americans would have none of it, and a
popular ditty rang throughout the country: "Remember the
Maine/ To hell with Spain!"4 War finally broke out in April,
1898. At that juncture, Admiral George Dewey whose small
force was in Japan, was ordered to show the flag in the
neighborhood of the Philippines so as to catch the attention of
the Spaniards in a diversion to the action in Cuba.5 When
President McKinley issued his order, he could not even properly
locate the Philippines on the map, telling his friends that it was
a place "somewhere away around on the other side of the
world".6 Nonetheless, the US Congress passed on April 19,
1898, a resolution declaring war with Spain, and the Secretary
of the Navy, with McKinley's approval, cabled "Proceed at once
to the Philippines. Commence operations against the Spanish
squadron. You must capture or destroy. Use utmost
'
endeavors." After midnight on May 1, 1898, Dewey did
proceed to the Philippines and destroyed the aging Spanish fleet
after a two-hour battle. The shortness of the sea battle could be
equaled only by the length of McKinley's angst as he agonized
3 d. at 10.
4_d. at97.
5
/d. at 100.
6Ibid.
7/d. at 102.
Chapter Seven: Conquest and Penetration:
Birth of the Mestizo 1 171
8 Id. at 99.
9
_d. at 125.
'0 /_d, at 126.
1Id. at 127.
12_.d. at 128.
172 1 MESTIZO: The Story of the Philippine Legal System
leaders of the country had labored under the delusion that it was
America's 'Manifest Destiny' to expand westward to make the
Pacific an American lake. 13 On October 26, 1898, McKinley
instructed his negotiators in Paris that he now wanted to annex
the whole Philippines in its entirety, and not only the crucial
parts of it. And so, on December 10 of that year, the treaty of
Paris was signed granting independence to Cuba but making the
14
Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico American possessions.
The treaty provided a veneer to legitimize the American
occupation of the Philippines; it can also be seen as the
marriage contract between the civil law and the common law
system in what may be called a union of convenience.
The Philippines became an unincorporated territory of
the United States starting with a military government headed by
Major General Wesley Merritt, a veteran who fought with
Custer against the Indians. As the first military governor of the
islands, he acted as if he were still pursuing the Apaches.' 5
When the Philippine-American war broke out in February,
1899, the responsibility for the governance of the Philippines
was transferred from the State department to the War
department. This department was headed by Elihu Root, a
Harvard-trained lawyer, who was also transferred from the State
department to Secretary of War as of August 1899. One of his
first official acts was to justify the expansionist policy of the US
as regards the Philippines and, in the instructions he drafted to
the Philippine Commission, he emphasized that America would
13
Robert Cumings, DOMINION FROM SEA TO SEA: PACIFIC
ASCENDANCY AND AMERICAN POWER (Yale, 2010), p. 10.
14 Karnow, gd. at 130.
15 Cumings, supra. at 118. In fact, 11 of the US army generals assigned to
the Philippines were veterans of the Indian wars.
Chapter Seven: Conquest and Penetration:
Birth of the Mestizo 1 173
16
Karnow, sura atp. 170.
17 See McKinley's Instructions to the Second Philippine Commission.
1'Karnow, suyra. at p. 173.
'9 United States v. D 2 Phil. 269.
20 Dowies v. Bidwell 182 U.S. 244, which ruled that Puerto Rico, being
only an unincorporated territory, is not subject to all the provisions of the
US Constitution. See also Peke v. US., 183 U.S. 176 (1901), applying
that ruling to the Philippines.
174 1 MESTIZO: The Story of the Philippine Legal System
that "if you should decide that the Dingley Law must extend to
these islands, it will produce a confusion in the finances here,
for which at present I see no remedy, and it will subject these
islands and their businesses to a tariff law framed only for the
U.S. and inapplicable to islands so far removed from that
country., 25 Obviously the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Taft,
for, in a 5-4 decision, it held that the protection of the
Constitution could not be automatically extended to the
colonies. 26 This ruling was applied to the Philippines in the case
of the 14 Diamond Rings,27 where the Federal Supreme Court
was also divided 5-4 along the lines of the Insular cases
decision. The majority also held, in effect, that the Philippines,
though not a foreign country, was placed outside the provisions
of the U.S. Constitution with respect to national taxation.
Subsequently, the area of civil and political rights previously
denied to the Philippines and other colonized territories was
expanded by the U.S. Supreme Court (e.g. trial by jury).28
The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Insular
Cases was pursuant to the interests of the economic centurions
of the U.S. not only for the protection of their sectoral business
participation but also for trade expansion. Stanley Karnow
writes that the Supreme Court in these cases bowed to McKinley
and the Republicans in Congress. 29 As Mr. Dooley of Finley
Peter Dunne perceived it, "no matter whether the constitution
follows the flag or not, the Supreme Court follows the election
2
1/d. at 208.
26 De Lima v. Bidwell,
182 U.S. 1; Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 (1901).
27 Pepke v. U.S., 183 U.S. 176 (1901).
28 Kepner v. U.S., 195 U.S. 100 (1904); Dorr v. U.S., 195 U.S. 138 (1904).
29S. Karnow, INOUR OWN IMAGE: AMERICA'S EMPIRE INTHE
PILIPPINES (1979), p. 192.
Chapter Seven: Conquest and Penetration:
Birth of the Mestizo 1 177
30
Hayden, THE PHILIPPINES: A STUDY IN NATIONAL
31 DEVELOPMENT 243 (1942).
Pres. MacKinley Instructions, sura note 22, ibid.
32The Malolos Constitution, reprinted in 2 Aruego, THE FRAMING OF
33
THE PHILIPPINE CONSTITUTION (1937) at 1070.
ibid.
Chapter Seven: Conquest and Penetration:
Birth of the Mestizo 1 179
34
Act No. 136 sec. 18 (1901).
31 Alzua v. Johnso 21 Phil. 308 (1912).
180 1MESTIZO: The Story of the Philippine Legal System
to the patent statute.3 6 Then the Philippine Court laid down the
rule that all provisions of the United States Constitution for the
protection of the rights and privileges of individuals which were
extended to the Philippines must be interpreted as meaning what
like provisions meant when the US Congress made them
37
applicable to the Philippines.
39
218 U.S. 302, 31 S. Ct. 21, 54 L. Ed. 1049 (1910).
ibid.
40 U.S. v. Toribio 15 Phil. 85 (1910).
Chapter Seven: Conquest and Penetration:
Birth of the Mestizo 1 181
Ascendancy of Substantive
Due Process in Constitutional Law
447 Taft, Mr. Wilson andthe Campaign, 10 Yale Review 19-20 (1920).
Mason, SECURITY THROUGH FREEDOM 38 (1959).
48Apostol, THE ECONOMIC POLICY OF THE PHILIPPINE
GOVERNMENT; OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF BUSINESS 93
49
(1923).
1bid.
50
bid.
5 1Anderson, THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 139 (1939).
184 1 MESTIZO: The Story of the Philippine Legal System
52
Hoover himself.
It was at this stage of Philippine economic development
that the American-dominated judiciary became a model of what
a court should be in protecting property interests against the
assaults of what was then the advent of the newly-installed
Filipino legislature. Suddenly, it dawned on the judiciary that
an all-Filipino legislative body might pass laws destructive of
property rights.
Thus, new meaning came to be infused into the due
process clause of the Organic Act when, in 1922, an Act of
Congress and an implementing executive order of the previous
Governor General fixing the price of rice was challenged before
the courts.53 At that time, the Philippines could not produce
sufficient rice and it used to import rice from Saigon. A rise in
price in Saigon caused a corresponding increase in the
Philippines, and as the stocks of rice became depleted and the
chances for importation grew uncertain, the rice merchants
withdrew their stocks from the stores and hoarded them,
awaiting the high prices that would follow. The machinations
of market manipulators made the price soar beyond the means
of the consumers. It was thus that the government sought to
remedy the situation by regulating the price of rice. 54 A
Chinese merchant, Ang Tang Ho, was accused of violating the
law and the executive order and, by way of defense, he
challenged the constitutionality of the executive order as well as
the enabling statute granting authority to the Governor General
52
/d. at 49.
5
3Apostol, suranote 50 at 23.
*4Report of the Secretary of the Department of Commerce and
Communications (1919).
Chapter Seven: Conquest and Penetration:
Birth of the Mestizo 1185
61 Id. at 454.
Adkins v. Children's Hospital of D.C., 261 U.S. 525, 43 S. Ct. 394, 67 L.
Ed. 785 (1923).
188 1 MESTIZO: The Story of the Philippine Legal System
63 /d. at 452.
64 Adair v. U.S. 208 U.S. 161, 28 S. Ct. 277, 52, L. Ed. 436 (1908).
65 Copage v. Kansas 236 U.S. 1. 35 S. Ct. 240, 59 L. Ed. 441 (1915).
6 Yu Cong Eng v. Trinidad, 271 U.S. 500, 46 S. Ct. 619, 70 L. Ed. 1059
(1926).
Chapter Seven: Conquest and Penetration:
Birth of the Mestizo 1 189
67
Act No. 2972 sec. 2 (1920).
68
1d. at 511.
69
Id. at 514.
190 1 MESTIZO: The Story of the Philippine Legal System
Procedural Law:
From Inquisitorial to Adversarial
71 Pedro Ylagan, "Philippine Law", III Phil. L.J. 237 (1917), at 239-
72 Boyd v. U.S.,116 U.S. 616 (1886).
192 1 MESTIZO: The Story of the Philippine Legal System
73
such evidence is indeed admissible.
With this ruling, criminal defendants started looking for
other ways to justify exclusion of illegally-procured evidence.
In 1911, an accused named Mills succeeded in obtaining an
order from a federal court that evidence obtained by unlawful
search be returned to him.7 4 He did this through the devise of
petitioning for the return of the evidence after indictment but
before trial. The Supreme Court three years later approved of
this method and reversed its ruling in Adams, saying that its
ruling in that case was prompted by a desire to prevent the
interruption of an orderly trial by means of the intrusion of a
75
collateral issue as to the source of evidence.
In the Philippines, the Supreme Court followed the
federal rule laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Alvarez v.
CFI of Tayabas,76 our Court held that documents unlawfully
seized inside a house must be returned provided timely motions
are filed for their return. In U.S. v. de los Reyes and
Esguerra,77 our Court stated that "it is better sometimes that
crimes go unpunished than that the citizen should be liable to
have his premises invaded". Then came the war and liberation,
and with it the Prosecution of Japanese war-time collaborators.
In the case of Moncado v. People's Court,78 our
Supreme Court relied on Justice Cardozo as saying that the
criminal should not go free because the constable has
79
80
Peovlev. Defoe. 150 NE 585.
Uy Khetin v. Villareal 42 Phil. 886.
81 20 SCRA 383.
194 1 MESTIZO: The Story of the Philippine Legal System
100 Peonle v. Perez 45 Phil. 599 (1923), where the accused, while debating
with another person, said: "And the Filipinos, like myself, must use
bolos for cutting off Wood's head for having recommended a bad thing
for the Philippines". The test used by the court is "when the intention
and effect is seditious, the constitutional guaranties of free speech and
assembly must yield punitive measures to maintain the prestige of duly
constituted authority, the supremacy of the constitution and the laws, and
the existence of the State".
101Karnow, sypra p. 153.
202 1 MESTIZO: The Story of the Philippine Legal System
Statutory Interpretation
Commercial Law
123 p.V. Fernandez,"The Emergent World Federal Capitalist System and Its
Implication for Constitutionalism", in LAW AND SOCIETY:
COLLECTED WORKS OF PERFECTO V. FERNANDEZ (2005) p. 346.
Chapter Seven: Conquest and Penetration:
Birth of the Mestizo 1 215