Chapter 6: American Culture, Constitutionalism, and the Common Law

By Agabin
I.
America as a Business Civilization
Anthropologists: Civilization = Culture
Samuel Huntington: civ and culture refer to overall way of life of a people and civ is a culture writ large
Immanuel Wallerstein: civ = particular co
ncatenation of worldview, customs, structures and culture w/c forms a historical whole
US = business civilization
Values, ideals, juristic thought, revolved around the elements of the business system: trade, commerce, finance, etc
Characterized by:
1. Private property
2. Contract and freedom of contract
3. Industrialism
4. Business
5. Profit motive
6. Individualism
Historical Devt of Business Civ: 4 Main Periods
1. Pre-industrial/ Agricultural Period (before 1840)
2. Corporate Industrial Period (1840-1880)
3. Corporate Monopoly (1880-WWI)
4. Corporate Finance (WWI-Present)
American Law is most inspired by economic referents
While Continental civil law is a product of political referents, common law responds to economic referents
Edward Corwin: basic pillar of capitalism, the protection of established prop rights against interference by the state, is the
basic doctrine of American Constitutional law
Business Civ = creative, expansionist, imperialist
Thats why America wanted to remake Phil society into an image of the US
Goal of American policy towards the Phil: Cultural Imperialism (and econ exploitation)
Overarching value under American Constitutionalism = liberty of the individual
Implies freedom of enterprise and industry
Mutation of the due process clause shows how culture reshapes law
II.
American Origins: The Birth of Judicial Constitutionalism
Before 1898, US peaked into the age of enterprise
Industrial revolution enthroned the philosophy of individualism
Hegemony of corporations spelled the dominance of the economic doctrine of LAISSEZ FAIRE, w/c shaped political thought as
well
Twin principles of due process and liberty of contract was induced by the ruling in Munn v. Illinois w/c was subversive of the rights
to private prop
It was the American Bar Assoc w/c was responsible for the writing of laissez faire into the Consti
Bec they were the lawyers of big corps
Judiciary asserted its leadership over political thought and began judicial legislation
Incorporation of LF into the Consti was done by:
1. Thomas Cooley
a. Most influential writer on the American Consti in the 19th centrury
2. Justice Stephen Field
a. Spokesman of LF in the SC from 1870-1880
b. Dissenting opinions in state regulation cases were adopted later on
3. Christopher Tiedeman
a. Masterful Treatise on limitations: Limitations of Police Power
b. Wrote to defend the conservative classes
Police Power was rendered impotent by business leviathans/ domestic monopolies
Union Pacific Railway and Standard Oil
Large corps exercised pol power
III.
How the business civ wrote the LF into the American Consti
Began with the Slaughter House cases
Granted exclusive rights to a corp w/ respect to slaughter of animals
Prior case: Wynehamer v New York
Legislative prohibition on sale of liquor as violative of due process
Due Process: where prop rights are acquired by a citizen under a law, govt can no longer take them away except the court
Railroad networks were invoking DP clause against rate-fixing legislation
Opening wedge to judicial conservatism: SC decision that a railroad corp is a person w/in the meaning of the 14 th
amendment and entitled to the guarantees of the Consti
Thus corp could invoke the DP clause
Court evolved the doctrine of liberty of contract
Citizens liberty in the 14th Amendment refers not only to freedom from personal restraint, but also right to pursue any
livelihood, and for the purpose to enter into all contracts w/c may be proper and necessary to that livelihood
These doctrines constitute LF in legal mantle
Chapter 7: Conquest and Penetration: Birth of the Mestizo

I.
Historical Background
Feb. 15, 1898 explosion of USS Maine
- Theodore Roosevelt, undersecretary of the Navy, blamed it on Spain
- Roosevelt, Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan(published The Influence of Sea Power on History w/c theorized
that natl security and international supremacy depended on a powerful navy), and Henry Cabot

Lodge(wanted America to realize its Manifest Destiny as a world power) manipulated Pres. McKinley
to wage war on Spain
Why is Pres. McKinleys mind like a bed?
Bec. It has to be made up for him before he can use it.
- Cabinet members convinced Pres to annex the Phil
- McKinley said he should educated the Filipinos
Dec. 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris
- Started with a military govt headed by Major General Wesley Merritt
Elihu Root, Harvard-trained lawyer
- Emphasized that they would civilize the natives
- Perceived mission to civilize the Filipinos with a Krag
- Taft thought Filipinos as ignorant, superstitious, and credulous
SC Case
- WON the US consti followed the American flag
- Held: not all rights under US consti followed the flag into the Phil
Ilustrados became little brown brothers to the Americans
- Formed Partido Federalista
Spooner Amendment
- Created the principal organ of admin = the Philippine Commission
- Civil govt was instituted
- William Howard Taft headed the 2nd Phil Commission (was a federal judge in Ohio)
II.
Constitutionalism and Common Law Comes to the Phil
1900: McKinley instructed Taft
- Impose the inviolable rule that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property w/o due process
of law
- SC of US had jurisdiction over all judgments of the Phil SC in cases where the Organic Law or any law
of the US was involved
Courts protected American interests in the colonies
- Insular Cases for Puerto Rico
- 14 Diamond Rings in the PH
o Held: PH, though not a foreign country, was placed outside the US Consti w/ respect to national
taxation
- Meant that agricultural products in US were assured of protection from competition by Phil products and
US can adjust tariff laws of the PH to allow preferential entry of American goods
- Also extended the Chinese exclusion laws to the Phils, and made it justifiable to deny American
citizenship to Filipinos
- Organic Act of 1902: all inhabitants of the PI (Phil Islands) shall be deemed to be citizens of the Phils
only
Besides the influence of American jurisprudence (stare decisis), majority of the members of the Phil SC were
Americans
- McKinley instructed Taft Commission: Indispensable qualification = absolute and unconditional loyalty
to the US
Filipinos had their own notions of DP clause before the coming of Americans
- Malolos consti had same DP provision
2nd Phil Commission was charged w/ making a govt in the American image
- Vested w/ legislative and executive functions
- Influx of borrowed laws and common law doctrines
- SC interpreted laws in line w/ American precedents
III.
Constitutional Law: Hegemony of Police Power
Phil SC had to use common law precepts in public law to assert colonial authority
- Subordinated prop rights to police power
- 1st decision of SC about DP affirmed supremacy of Police power
Regulation of Shipping that common law doctrines were excessively used
- De Villata v Stanley = govt may require shipping companies to carry mail free of charge
- But SC reversed ruling after
- SC veered away from established doctrines
- Thus began judicial legislation

IV.
Ascendancy of substantive DP in Constitutional Law
President Harding
- Guiding slogan: less govt in business and more business in govt
- Appointed gov-general Leonard Wood: policy of keeping the govt out of business to ecourage private
enterprise
- Sold to private firms almost all govt corporations
1922, law fixing the price of rice was challenged
- At the time, PH could not produce enough rice and imported from Saigon
- Prices soared and Chinese merchant Ang Tang Ho was accused of violating law
- SC declared law unconstitutional
Doctrine of liberty of contract
- Women and Child Labor Law w/c required employers to give maternity leave pay
- SC declared law unconstitutional
Consti doctrines born out of business civ of America were applied indiscriminately to an underdeveloped
economy
- Helpless Court bec of stare decisis
- US CJ William Howard Taft: Yu Cong Eng case = Chinese Bookkeeping Act
- Act requiring account books to be in Eng, Spanish or any local dialect
- Held: to prohibit Chinese merchants from keeping books in Chinese would be oppressive and arbitrary
V.
Procedural Law: From Inquisitorial to Adversarial
Good example of the twists and turn of the rules of procedure arising from the shift from Inq to Adversarial:
history of jurisprudence on admission of illegally obtained evidence
- Under Spain: illegally seized evidence was admissible
- Common law: evidence is not rendered inadmissible simply bec it was unlawfully obtained
Criminal defendants started looking for other ways to justify exclusion of illegally-procured evidence
- 1911, Mills petitioned for the return of the evidence after indictment but before trial
- Court granted
Alvarez v CFI of Tayabas
- Held that documents unlawfully seized inside a house must be returned provided timely motions are
filed for the return
US v de los Reyes and Esguerra
- Better that crimes go unpunished than that the citizen should be liable to have his premises invaded
Moncado v Peoples court (during Prosecution of jap war time collaborators)
- Reversed previous doctrines that evidence wrongfully obtained cannot be seized under a search
warrant for the purpose of using it as evidence
Stonehill v Diokno
- Abandoned Moncado ruling and reverted to earlier doctrines of exclusion
VI.
Retention of Private law and Custom law
Amendments were instituted w/ respect to marriage law
- Instituted civil marriages
Temporary expedience dictated retention of customary law of indigenous Filipinos
- But later reversed after dealing with revolutionaries
- Policy of assimilation
- 1905, US abrogated treaty with Sulu and imposed a uniform law
- Ethnic tribes retreated to the mountains and forests
Fear of distributing land titles was a big factor in decision to protect existing prop rights
- Treaty of Paris had a provision for protection of prop rights
Taft: policy of Attraction towards the elite
- Re-entrenched feudal oligarchy
VII.
Criminal law: Lone Survivor in Public Law
Amended
- Treason, Insurrection and Sedition Law, Libel Law, etc incorporated into the Penal Code
- Penal Code belongs to the classical school w/ concept of free will and punishment is proportional to
nature and gravity of the offense
Consistent with the policy of civilizing with a Krag
- dangerous tendency test to determine the seditious nature of speech
VIII.

The Judicial System follows the Flag

Military Commander in 1899 was Major General Elwell Otis

- From Harvard Law School
- Prescribed municipal elections
- Renovated judiciary and put native magistrates
- Created SC, with Cayetano Arellano as CJ
Doctrine of stare decisis
- Decisions of Phil SC may be reviewed by certiorari by the Federal SC of the US
- No escape from stare decisis
IX.
Statutory Interpretation
Common law judges reshaped law of the land in the PH
- Techniques of common law courts were used to discern intent
Concepts on equity in the PH are seen from the perspective of American Common law
X.
Retention of the Civil Code provisions on Persons and Property
Retention of local private law was merely in accordance with principles of International Law
- parts that were inconsistent w/ American principles were superseded
- 1920, Shoop Case: portions of CC were modified or superseded by laws passed by the Phil
Commission
- Most significant changes were those regarding activities of a business civ
The law had to follow the dominant ideology of the colonizer
- Ex. Interest in land = economic
- Sugar lobby focused on using sugar estates in PH, and mining, etc
Land laws were modified
- Divided into prop rights in land and prop rights in movables
- Diff bet property and the subject matter of property
Payne-Aldrich Act of 1909 and Underwood-Simmons Act of 1913
- Created a dependent economy
XI.
ObliCon
Common law doctrines
- Negligence, moral damages, proximate cause, etc
- Estoppel for contracts
- Laches: equity will not aid a plaintiff whose unexcused delay would be prejudicial to defendant
Consideration of American jurisprudence and Causa of Civil Law
- Same effects
1950 CC adopted rule on discharge by breach
- When good havent been delivered, and buyer repudiated the sale, seller may rescind contract of sale
Example of hybridization
- Mixing of pater familias and common law concept of reasonable man
- Code of Civil procedure that modified law of succession
o Heir: relative
o Devisee if property and Legatee if personality
o Heir not liable for debts of decease
- Mixing of concepts of surety and guaranty
o Spanish: single term fianza
o Now surety = bound to pay, guaranty = only in case of insolvency
XII.
Commercial Law
Always reshaped by the ideology of the dominant economy
- Most evident attempt to create Phil society in image of America
- New laws became foundation of a capitalist economy
- Imposed laws in an underdeveloped economy w/c was not ready to adjust to a modern civ
- Philippine common law evolved based on Anglo-American jurisprudence

Novation is the extinguishment of an obligation by the substitution or change of the

obligation by a subsequent one which extinguishes or modifies the first,
either by changing the object or principal conditions, or by substituting another in place
of the debtor, or by subrogating a third person in the rights of the creditor.

For novation to take place, the following requisites must concur: 1) There must be a
previous valid obligation; 2) The parties concerned must agree to a new contract; 3) The
old contract must be extinguished; and 4) There must be a valid new contract.
Ratification or confirmation may validate an act done in behalf of another
without authority from the latter. The effect is as if the latter did the act
himself.
In agency, ratification is the adoption or confirmation by one person of
an act performed on his behalf by another without authority. The
substance of ratification is the confirmation after the act, amounting
to a substitute for a prior authori