MESTIZO: Story of the PH Legal System (by Pacifico A.

Agabin)

Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels

- Allegory of Mother PH culture heritage from 2 sources: Spanish & American
- Also, two strands of law subsisting side by side: Western Law & Islamic Law

PH Legal System
- Hybrid of Civil Law (Spanish) and Common Law (Anglo-American)
- Difference between British-and-American-influenced mixed jurisdictions
- PH Civil Law – turbulent monogamy with American law
o Child of turbulent monogamy is a hybrid  “mestizo
- The result of cross-breeding common and civil law systems
- Legal Mestizo – civilian system that had been under the pressure from Anglo-American common
law and has been overlaid by that rival system of jurisprudence
- Heterosis – when a hybrid emerges superior to its parents
o How Administrative Law & Martial Law (mutants) have evolved in a Third World setting

STUDYING LEGAL HISTORY

Why do we include culture in our study of legal history?

- Because law is both FACT and ARTIFACT
o Law is merely one aspect of our culture – that which employs the force of organized
society to regulate conduct and prevent/punish deviations from prescribed social norms
o Law as a form of social control
o Culture as patterns of learned behaviour, distinguished from instinctual behaviour of
animals
o Anatole France: what distinguishes man from animals is lying & literature
 Lying and literature are essential parts of legal culture
o John Henry Merryman: study of legal system includes a study of legal penetration, legal
extension, legal structures, actors, processes = legal culture.
o Legal Culture – those historically conditioned, deeply rooted attitudes about the nature
of the law and the proper structure & operation of a legal system in a society
o Legal Penetration – extent to which legal rules have been accepted by people as part of
their lives