IMBONG V OCHOA
being challenged has had a direct adverse effect
Main decision (Mendoza)
REQUISITES FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW
The power of judicial review is limited by four
exacting requisites:
1. there must be an actual case or controversy;
2. the petitioners must possess locus standi;
3. the question of constitutionality must be raised
at the earliest opportunity; and
4. the issue of constitutionality must be the lis
mota of the case
WISDOM OF CONGRESS
The Court may pass upon the constitutionality of
acts of the legislative and the executive branches,
since its duty is not to review their collective
wisdom but, rather, to make sure that they have
acted in consonance with their respective
authorities and rights as mandated of them by the
Constitution. If after said review, the Court finds
no constitutional violations of any sort, then, it
has no more authority of proscribing the actions
under review.
ACTUAL CASE OR CONTROVERSY
An actual case or controversy means an existing
case or controversy that is appropriate or ripe for
determination, not conjectural or anticipatory,
lest the decision of the court would amount to an
advisory opinion. The rule is that courts do not sit
to adjudicate mere academic questions to satisfy
scholarly interest, however intellectually
challenging. The controversy must be justiciable
— definite and concrete, touching on the legal
relations of parties having adverse legal interests.
In other words, the pleadings must show an active
antagonistic assertion of a legal right, on the one
hand, and a denial thereof, on the other; that is, it
must concern a real, tangible and not merely a
theoretical question or issue. There ought to be an
actual and substantial controversy admitting of
specific relief through a decree conclusive in
nature, as distinguished from an opinion advising
what the law would be upon a hypothetical state
of facts.
RIPENESS
Corollary to the requirement of an actual case or
controversy is the requirement of ripeness. A
question is ripe for adjudication when the act
an the individual challenging it. For a case to be
considered ripe for adjudication, it is a
prerequisite that something has then been
accomplished or performed by either branch
before a court may come into the picture, and the
petitioner must allege the existence of an
immediate or threatened injury to himself as a
result of the challenged action. He must show that
he has sustained or is immediately in danger of
sustaining some direct injury as a result of the act
complained of.
Even a singular violation of the Constitution
and/or the law is enough to awaken judicial duty.
In this case, the Court is of the view that an actual
case or controversy exists and that the same is
ripe for judicial determination. Considering that
the RH Law and its implementing rules have
already taken effect and that budgetary measures
to carry out the law have already been passed, it
is evident that the subject petitions present a
justiciable controversy. As stated earlier, when an
action of the legislative branch is seriously
alleged to have infringed the Constitution, it not
only becomes a right, but also a duty of the
Judiciary to settle the dispute. (e.g. medical
practitioners or medical providers are in danger
of being criminally prosecuted under the RH Law
for vague violations thereof, particularly public
health officers who are threatened to be dismissed
from the service with forfeiture of retirement and
other benefits)
FACIAL CHALLENGE
In United States (US) constitutional law, a facial
challenge, also known as a First Amendment
Challenge, is one that is launched to assail the
validity of statutes concerning not only protected
speech, but also all other rights in the First
Amendment. These include religious freedom,
freedom of the press, and the right of the people
to peaceably assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances. While
this Court has withheld the application of facial
challenges to strictly penal statutes, it has
expanded its scope to cover statutes not only
regulating free speech, but also those involving
religious freedom, and other fundamental rights.
The underlying reason for this modification is
simple. For unlike its counterpart in the U.S., this
Court, under its expanded jurisdiction, is
mandated by the Fundamental Law not only to
settle actual controversies involving rights which
are legally demandable and enforceable, but also
to determine whether or not there has been a
grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or
excess of jurisdiction on the part of any branch or
instrumentality of the Government.
LOCUS STANDI
Locus standi or legal standing is defined as a
personal and substantial interest in a case such
that the party has sustained or will sustain direct
injury as a result of the challenged governmental
act. It requires a personal stake in the outcome of
the controversy as to assure the concrete
adverseness which sharpens the presentation of
issues upon which the court so largely depends
for illumination of difficult constitutional
questions.
TRANSCENDENTAL IMPORTANCE
The rule on standing is a matter of procedure,
hence, can be relaxed for non- traditional
plaintiffs like ordinary citizens, taxpayers, and
legislators when the public interest so requires,
such as when the matter is of transcendental
importance, of overreaching significance to
society, or of paramount public interest.
J Brion's Ponencia
The three types of Adjudicative Judicial Powers.
In sum, judicial power, as now provided under the
1987 Constitution, involves three types of
controversies, namely:
(1) the traditional justiciable cases involving
actual disputes and controversies based purely on
demandable and enforceable rights;
(2) the traditional justiciable cases as understood
in (1), but additionally involving jurisdictional
and constitutional issues;
(3) pure constitutional disputes attended by grave
abuse of discretion in the process involved or in
their result/s.
The first two types are already covered by the
Rules of Court that, as recognized by Section 5,
are already in place, subject to the amendments
that the Supreme Court may promulgate.
The third type may inferentially be covered by the
current provisions of the Rules of Court,
specifically by the rules on certiorari, prohibition
and mandamus but, strictly speaking, requires
special rules that the current Rules of Court do not
provide since the third type does not involve
disputes arising as traditionally justiciable cases.
Most importantly, the third type does not involve
judicial or quasi–judicial exercise of adjudicative
power that the Supreme Court has traditionally
exercised over lower tribunals7 to ensure that
they stay within the confines of their adjudicative
jurisdiction.
Other comments
The 1987 Constitution, in contrast with the
preceding Constitutions, substantially fleshed out
the meaning of "judicial power," not only by
confirming the meaning of the term as understood
by jurisprudence up to that time, but by going
beyond the accepted jurisprudential meaning of
the term. Judicial power is wider than the power
of adjudication that it traditionally carried (by
using the word "includes") and at the same time
incorporated the basic requirements for
adjudication in the traditional concept, namely,
the presence of "actual controversies," based on
"rights which are legally demandable and
enforceable."
The confirmation expressly mentions that the
power is granted to "courts of justice" and, aside
from being a power, is imposed as a duty of the
courts. Thus, the Constitution now lays the courts
open to the charge of failure to do their
constitutional duty when and if they violate the
obligations imposed in Section 1, Article VIII of
the 1987 Constitution. Section 5, Article VIII of
the 1987 Constitution further fleshes out the
irreducible "powers" of the Supreme Court in
terms of its original, appellate, and review
adjudicative powers and its other non-
adjudicative powers. In so doing, Section 5 also
con rmed the extent of the constitutionally-
granted adjudicative power of the lower courts
that Congress has the authority to create (by cannot render. Thus, when grave abuse of
defining, prescribing and apportioning their discretion amounting to a clear constitutional
jurisdictions), as well as the grant of violation is alleged and preliminarily shown, the
administrative, executive and quasi-legislative Supreme Court is duty-bound to take cognizance
powers to the Supreme Court, all within the of the case, or at least to remand it to the
sphere of its judicial operations. appropriate lower court, based on its
consideration of the urgency, importance or
In the process of making "judicial power" more evidentiary requirements of the case.
specific and in outlining the specific powers of
the Supreme Court, the Constitution made
express the power of "judicial review," i.e., the
power to pass upon the constitutional validity of
any treaty, international or executive agreement,
law, presidential decree, proclamation, order,
instruction, ordinance, or regulation, 4 as the "law
or the Rules of Court may provide." Still another
addition, a completely new one, to the concept of
judicial power under the 1987 Constitution is the
power "to determine whether or not there has
been a grave abuse of discretion amounting to
lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of any
branch or instrumentality of the Government."

Under the expanded judicial power, justiciability

expressly depends only on the presence or
absence of grave abuse of discretion, as
distinguished from a situation where the issue of
constitutional validity is raised within a
traditionally justiciable case where the elements
of actual controversy based on specific legal
rights must exist. In fact, even if the requirements
for strict justiciability are applied, these requisites
can already be taken to be present once grave
abuse of discretion is prima facie shown to be
present.

In the process of lawmaking or rulemaking, for

example, an actual controversy is already present
when the law or rule is shown to have been
attended by grave abuse of discretion because it
was passed; it operates; or its substantive contents
fall, outside the contemplation of the
Constitution. In the expanded judicial power, any
citizen of the Philippines to whom the assailed
law or rule is shown to apply necessarily has
locus standi since a constitutional violation
constitutes an affront or injury to the affected
citizens of the country. If at all, a less stringent
requirement of locus standi only needs to be
shown to differentiate a justiciable case of this
type from the pure or mere opinion that the courts