Tanada - v - Tuvera
Facts:
Note: I made this case digest when I was still a law student. The ones posted on my blog were not due for submission as part of any academic requirement. I want to remind you that there is no substitute to reading the full text of the case! Use at your own risk.
1. Invoking
the people's right to be informed on matters of public concern, a right
recognized in Section 6, Article IV of the 1973 Constitution, as well as the
principle that laws to be valid and enforceable must be published in the
Official Gazette (OG) or otherwise effectively promulgated, petitioners seek a writ of mandamus to
compel respondent public officials to publish, and/or cause the publication in
the OG of various presidential decrees, letters of instructions, general
orders, proclamations, executive orders, letter of implementation and
administrative orders.
2. The
respondents, through the Solicitor General, would have this case dismissed outright
on the ground that
a.
petitioners
have no legal personality or standing to bring the instant petition. Section 3,
Rule 65 of the Rules of Court[1].
b.
publication
in the OG is not a sine qua non requirement for the effectivity of laws where
the laws themselves provide for their own effectivity dates. Article 2 of the
Civil Code[2].
Issue:
1.
WON the petitioners have legal personality. YES.
2.
WON publication in the OG is necessary. YES.
Held: Court orders
respondents to publish in the OG all unpublished presidential issuances which
are of general application, and unless so published, they shall have no binding
force and effect.
1.
The
right sought to be enforced by petitioners herein is a public right recognized
by no less than the fundamental law of the land. If petitioners were not
allowed to institute this proceeding, it would indeed be difficult to conceive
of any other person to initiate the same, considering that the Solicitor
General, the government officer generally empowered to represent the people,
has entered his appearance for respondents.
2.
Section
1 of Commonwealth Act 638 provides that there shall be published in the OG:
a.
[1]
all important legislative acts and resolutions of a public nature of the
Congress of the Philippines;
b.
[2]
all executive and administrative orders and proclamations, except such as have
no general applicability;
c.
[3]
decisions or abstracts of decisions of the Supreme Court and the Court of
Appeals as may be deemed by said courts of sufficient importance to be so
published;
d.
[4]
such documents or classes of documents as may be required so to be published by
law; and
e.
[5]
such documents or classes of documents as the President of the Philippines
shall determine from time to time to have general applicability and legal
effect, or which he may authorize so to be published. ...
-
Clear
object of provision: to give the general public adequate notice of the various
laws which are to regulate their actions and conduct as citizens. Without such notice and publication,
there would be no basis for the application of the maxim "ignorantia legis
non excusat." It would be the height of injustice to punish or
otherwise burden a citizen for the transgression of a law of which he had no
notice whatsoever, not even a constructive one.
-
While
the people are kept abreast by the mass media of the debates and deliberations
in the Batasan Pambansa—and for the diligent ones, ready access to the
legislative records—no such publicity accompanies the law-making process of the
President.
-
The
word "shall" used in the provision imposes upon respondent officials
an imperative duty. That duty must
be enforced if the Constitutional right of the people to be informed on matters of public concern is to
be given substance and reality. The law itself makes a list of what should be
published in the OG. Such listing leaves respondents with no discretion
whatsoever as to what must be included or excluded from such publication.
-
The
publication of all presidential issuances "of a public nature" or
"of general applicability" is mandated by law. Other presidential
issuances which apply only to particular persons or class of persons such as
administrative and executive orders need not be published on the assumption
that they have been circularized to all concerned.
-
The
implementation/enforcement of presidential decrees prior to their publication
in the OG is "an operative fact which may have consequences which cannot
be justly ignored. The past cannot always be erased by a new judicial
declaration ... that an all-inclusive statement of a principle of absolute
retroactive invalidity cannot be justified."
[1] SEC.
3. Petition for Mandamus.—When any
tribunal, corporation, board or person unlawfully neglects the performance of
an act which the law specifically enjoins as a duty resulting from an office,
trust, or station, or unlawfully excludes another from the use a rd enjoyment
of a right or office to which such other is entitled, and there is no other
plain, speedy and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law, the person aggrieved thereby may file a
verified petition in the proper court alleging the facts with certainty and
praying that judgment be rendered commanding the defendant, immediately or at
some other specified time, to do the act required to be done to Protect the
rights of the petitioner, and to pay the damages sustained by the petitioner by
reason of the wrongful acts of the defendant.
[2] Art.
2. Laws shall take effect after fifteen
days following the completion of their publication in the Official Gazette,
unless it is otherwise provided, ...
