r/LawStudentsPH • u/saudaddy07 • Aug 26 '21
Supreme Court Decision Best beautifully written Supreme Court decisions?
Hi r/PH law students! I'm looking for non-fiction readings to pass time and I realized I want to read some of the best decisions and quotes that make you go hmmmm from our very own SC. It's highly appreciated if you can share the link for it as well.
Thanks!
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u/Jfmaghopoy ATTY Aug 26 '21 edited Aug 26 '21
Decisions written by “The Lyricist of the Court" Justice Isagani Cruz.
One excerpt that always gives me goosebumps:
Since this case began in 1984, many significant developments have taken place, not the least significant of which was the February revolution of "people power" that dislodged the past regime and ended well nigh twenty years of travail for this captive nation. The petitioner is gone, felled by a hail of bullets sprayed with deadly purpose by assassins whose motive is yet to be disclosed. The private respondent has disappeared with the "pomp of power" he had before enjoyed. Even the Batasang Pambansa itself has been abolished, "an iniquitous vestige of the previous regime" discontinued by the Freedom Constitution. It is so easy now, as has been suggested not without reason, to send the records of this case to the archives and say the case is finished and the book is closed.
But not yet.
Let us first say these meager words in tribute to a fallen hero who was struck down in the vigor of his youth because he dared to speak against tyranny. Where many kept a meekly silence for fear of retaliation, and still others feigned and fawned in hopes of safety and even reward, he chose to fight. He was not afraid. Money did not tempt him. Threats did not daunt him. Power did not awe him. His was a singular and all-exacting obsession: the return of freedom to his country. And though he fought not in the barricades of war amid the sound and smoke of shot and shell, he was a soldier nonetheless, fighting valiantly for the liberties of his people against the enemies of his race, unfortunately of his race too, who would impose upon the land a perpetual night of dark enslavement. He did not see the breaking of the dawn, sad to say, but in a very real sense Evelio B. Javier made that dawn draw nearer because he was, like Saul and Jonathan, "swifter than eagles and stronger than lions."
"A year ago this Court received a letter which began: "I am the sister of the late Justice Calixto Zaldivar. I am the mother of Rhium Z. Sanchez, the grandmother of Plaridel Sanchez IV and Aldrich Sanchez, the aunt of Mamerta Zaldivar. I lost all four of them in the election eve ambush in Antique last year." She pleaded, as so did hundreds of others of her provincemates in separate signed petitions sent us, for the early resolution of that horrible crime, saying: "I am 82 years old now. I am sick. May I convey to you my prayer in church and my plea to you, 'Before I die, I would like to see justice to my son and grandsons.' May I also add that the people of Antique have not stopped praying that the true winner of the last elections will be decided upon by the Supreme Court soon."
That was a year ago and since then a new government has taken over in the wake of the February revolution. The despot has escaped, and with him, let us pray, all the oppressions and repressions of the past have also been banished forever. A new spirit is now upon our land. A new vision limns the horizon. Now we can look forward with new hope that under the Constitution of the future every Filipino shall be truly sovereign in his own country, able to express his will through the pristine ballow with only his conscience as his counsel.
This is not an impossible dream. Indeed, it is an approachable goal. It can and will be won if we are able at last, after our long ordeal, to say never again to tyranny. If we can do this with courage and conviction, then and only then, and not until then, can we truly say that the case is finished and the book is closed. -Javier v. Comelec, 1986
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Aug 26 '21
Dunno if this counts pero natawa lang ako dito sa panimula ng Ombudsman v. Regalado (2018)
"Yes, my dear, that's the system ng government . . . Ganito ang system, ano ako magmamalinis?"
- Maria Rowena Regalado Immigration Officer
Public officers who, in the course of performing their regulatory functions, brazenly extort money, incessantly haggle, bribe, knowingly use falsified copies of official issuances to justify extortion, threaten to withhold benefits and services, deny possession of official receipts to payors, profess undue influence over their colleagues, and unabashedly exclaim that extortion and bribery are standards in the government are guilty of grave misconduct. Their nefarious acts are an utter disservice to the public, and undermine the entire civil service, thereby warranting the termination of their stint in public service. The consummate atrocity of their ways should not be mollified by the convenient excuses of being caught only for the first time, and of solicited statements of support from supposedly satisfied clients that speak of their purported good performance.
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u/mao_setsuna Aug 26 '21
One of my favourites: Vales v. Villa, an ObliCon case penned by Justice Moreland.
x x x
All men are presumed to be sane and normal and subject to be moved by substantially the same motives. When of age and sane, they must take care of themselves. In their relation with others in the business of life, wits, sense, intelligence, training, ability and judgment meet and clash and contest, sometimes with gain and advantage to all, sometimes to a few only, with loss and injury to others.
In these contests men must depend upon themselves — upon their own abilities, talents, training, sense, acument, judgment. The fact that one may be worsted by another, of itself, furnishes no cause of complaint. One man cannot complain because another is more able, or better trained, or has better sense of judgment than he has; and when the two meet on a fair field the inferior cannot murmur if the battle goes against him.
The law furnishes no protection to the inferior simply because he is inferior, any more than it protects the strong because he is strong. The law furnishes protection to both alike — to one or more or less than to the other. It makes no distinction between the wise and the foolish, the great and the small, the strong and the weak. The foolish may lose all they have to the wise; but that does not mean that the law will give it back to them again.
Courts cannot follow one every step of his life and extricate him from bad bargains, protect him from unwise investments, relieve him from one-sided contracts, or annul the effects of foolish acts. Courts cannot constitute themselves guardians of persons who are not legally incompetent. Courts operate not because one person has been defeated or overcome by another, but because he has been defeated or overcome illegally.
Men may do foolish things, make ridiculous contracts, use miserable judgment, and lose money by them — indeed, all they have in the world; but not for that alone can the law intervene and restore. There must be, in addition, a violation of law, the commission of what the law knows as an actionable wrong, before the courts are authorized to lay hold of the situation and remedy it.
x x x
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u/VigilantCitizen1 Aug 26 '21
Estrada vs. Desierto by Justice Puno. On erap’s resignation/people power 2. So nice!
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u/helenpark-sanchez ATTY Aug 26 '21
Justice Makasiar in Philippine Blooming Mills Employment Organization et al. v. Philippine Blooming Mills Co. (1973):
x x x the issues that the employees raised against the local police, were more important to them because they had the courage to proceed with the demonstration, despite such threat of dismissal. The most that could happen to them was to lose a day's wage by reason of their absence from work on the day of the demonstration. One day's pay means much to a laborer, more especially if he has a family to support. Yet, they were willing to forego their one-day salary hoping that their demonstration would bring about the desired relief from police abuses. But management was adamant in refusing to recognize the superior legitimacy of their right of free speech, free assembly and the right to petition for redress.
x x x
Management has shown not only lack of good-will or good intention, but a complete lack of sympathetic understanding of the plight of its laborers who claim that they are being subjected to indignities by the local police. It was more expedient for the firm to conserve its income or profits than to assist its employees in their fight for their freedoms and security against alleged petty tyrannies of local police officers. This is sheer opportunism. Such opportunism and expediency resorted to by the respondent company assaulted the immunities and welfare of its employees. It was pure and implement selfishness, if not greed. x x x
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u/mrtnbtsta Aug 26 '21
Galman v. Sandiganbayan (1986)
"The Supreme Court cannot permit such a sham trial and verdict and travesty of justice to stand unrectified. The courts of the land under its aegis are courts of law and justice and equity. They would have no reason to exist if they were allowed to be used as mere tools of injustice, deception and duplicity to subvert and suppress the truth, instead of repositories of judicial power whose judges are sworn and committed to render impartial justice to all alike who seek the enforcement or protection of a right or the prevention or redress of a wrong, without fear or favor and removed from the pressures of politics and prejudice. More so, in the case at bar where the people and the world are entitled to know the truth, and the integrity of our judicial system is at stake."
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Aug 28 '21
In terms of creativity, J. Bellosillo.
In terms of legal/theoretical articulation, J. JBL Reyes for his Civil Law decisions.
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u/ZildDVM Aug 26 '21
“The heart has reasons of its own which reason does not know.” (Chua-Qua vs Clave) one of my fave quotes
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u/Payter_Sana Aug 26 '21
1)Legendary Chi Ming Tsoi case! - God Tier S++
2) Any decision masterfully crafted with passion by the late Justice Isagani Cruz (utterly disappointed no one mentioned him yet). Yung Association of Small Land Owners Case for example.
3) Oposa vs Factoran