A Universalist History of the 1987 Philippine Constitution (II)

Resumen

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This paper traces universalism --- the vision of international public order built upon rights and values shared by all individuals and peoples --- as a purposely-embedded ideology in the history and evolution of the Philippine Constitution. As the postcolonial and post-dictatorship founding document of the post-modern Philippine polity, the paper contends that 1987 Philippine Constitution enshrines nearly a century of constitutional text and practice which has led towards the present institutionalization of universalist rights-democratic theory in the Philippines’ constitutional interpretive canon.

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Extracto

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A Universalist History of the 1987 Philippine Constitution (II)

I. Universalism ‘Constitutionalized’: design, orientation, philosophy, and modes of entry

1.1. The Universalist Design, Orientation, and Philosophy of the 1987 Philippine Constitution

Against the previous discussion in Part I of this Article in Volume 10 of the Historia Constitucional of ideological currents in the history of Philippine constitutionalism, I now approach the universalist characterization of the 1987 Philippine Constitution from three areas. First, from aspects of its constitutional design, I submit that the plethora of institutional checks against the arbitrariness and abusive potential of executive power (e.g. expanded judicial review and rule-making powers of the Supreme Court; impeachment mechanisms and the establishment of special constitutional offices such as the Office of the Ombudsman and the Commission on Human Rights; provision for direct amendment of the Constitution by the people; partylist representation, multiparty system and the prohibition against political dynasties; among others) comprises a set of more direct avenues that empowers Filipino individuals to make and legitimate their political judgments in Philippine public order. These institutional checks were purposely devised by the Constitutional Commissioners with the end in view of restoring the constitutional primacy of the Filipino individual through his participation in popular sovereignty.

Second, the orientation of the 1987 Constitution shows a strong entrenchment of a rights-culture that appears more universalist in character than in previous constitutional epochs. At the time of drafting of the 1987 Constitution, active Philippine participation in the international legal order ---- as one of the original signatories of the United Nations Charter, and for having ratified all the major human rights treaties and signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights --- had already informed our conceptions of human rights. As seen from Philippine legal history, the concept of rights inherent to the individual by virtue of his/her basic humanity was a staple in our constitutional rights discourse. Given the atrocities of strongman rule in the Marcos dictatorship, the Constitutional Commissioners were assiduous in ensuring the textualization of ever more numerous individual rights. More importantly, however, the Constitutional

Commissioners had the foresight to recognize that international legal principles on individual human rights were not static normative conceptions. Maintaining the avenue of incorporation, (alongside a pacific internationalist foreign policy on use of force) would not only ensure that the full corpus of the Filipino individual’s human rights would be accorded constitutional protection, but that the Philippine government would dynamically recognize its evolving responsibilities as a sovereign independent state in the international legal order.

Finally, the philosophy of the 1987 Constitution is quaintly described by the Constitutional Commissioners themselves as "pro-life, pro-people, pro-poor, pro-Filipino, and anti-dictatorship". These are aspirations towards realizing (universalist) fundamental human dignity values --- first articulated by the 1899 Malolos Congress, but never motivating constitutional philosophy as strongly until the present 1987 Constitution.

There are many critics of the 1987 Constitution whose arguments swing from a pendulum.4On one end (which I prefer to call the ‘weak state’ objection), critique veers to the perceived excesses of diluting executive power, and the political instability caused or fomented by this constitutional policy. And on the other (the ‘mob rule’ objection), critique is leveled at ‘entrusting’ Filipino individual rationality with ‘too much democracy’ or ‘too many rights’ that result in exercises detrimental to ‘responsible citizenship’. Each critique has its own claims to validity, the evaluation of which would be beyond the scope of this work. Nonetheless, while the universalist response to these critiques could be the subject of separate research altogether, my universalist analysis of various executive particularist acts elsewhere5will contribute to a broader understanding of the actual persuasive value of normative assumptions in both objections on the supposed ‘weak state’ and ‘mob rule’ tendencies created by the 1987 Constitution.

But we must begin the evaluation of those critiques somewhere. I submit that a keener understanding of our constitutional orientation, design, and philosophy is a useful beginning for appreciating (and responding) to the ‘weak state’ and ‘mob rule’ critiques. Thus, the important descriptive result for now is the apparent constitutionalization of the universalist vision of a public law conception that has moved towards cosmopolitan democratic public order --- and ultimately, to

one that is governed by the rationality of fundamental...

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