Pelaez v.

Auditor
15 SCRA 569 Political Law Sufficient Standard Test and Completeness Test
In 1964, President Ferdinand Marcos issued executive orders creating 33
municipalities this was purportedly pursuant to Section 68 of the Revised
Administrative Code which provides in part:
The President may by executive order define the boundary of
any municipality and may change the seat of government within any
subdivision to such place therein as the public welfare may require
The then Vice President, Emmanuel Pelaez, as a taxpayer, filed a special civil
action to prohibit the auditor general from disbursing funds to be appropriated
for the said municipalities. Pelaez claims that the EOs were unconstitutional.
He said that Section 68 of the RAC had been impliedly repealed by Section 3 of
RA 2370 which provides that barrios may not be created or their boundaries
altered nor their names changed except by Act of Congress. Pelaez argues: If
the President, under this new law, cannot even create a barrio, how can he
create a municipality which is composed of several barrios, since barrios are
units of municipalities?
The Auditor General countered that there was no repeal and that only barrios
were barred from being created by the President. Municipalities are exempt
from the bar and that a municipality can be created without creating
barrios. He further maintains that through Sec. 68 of the RAC, Congress has
delegated such power to create municipalities to the President.
ISSUE: Whether or not Congress has delegated the power to create barrios to
the President by virtue of Sec. 68 of the RAC.
HELD: No. There was no delegation here. Although Congress may delegate to
another branch of the government the power to fill in the details in the
execution, enforcement or administration of a law, it is essential, to forestall a
violation of the principle of separation of powers, that said law: (a) be complete
in itself it must set forth therein the policy to be executed, carried out or

implemented by the delegate

and (b) fix a standard the limits of which

are sufficiently determinate or determinable to which the delegate must

conform in the performance of his functions. In this case, Sec. 68 lacked any
such standard. Indeed, without a statutory declaration of policy, the delegate
would, in effect, make or formulate such policy, which is the essence of every
law; and, without the aforementioned standard, there would be no means to
determine, with reasonable certainty, whether the delegate has acted within or
beyond the scope of his authority.
Further, although Sec. 68 provides the qualifying clause as the public welfare
may require which would mean that the President may exercise such
power as the public welfare may require is present, still, such will not replace
the standard needed for a proper delegation of power. In the first place, what
the phrase as the public welfare may require qualifies is the text which
immediately precedes hence, the proper interpretation is the President may
change the seat of government within any subdivision to such place therein as
the public welfare may require. Only the seat of government may be changed
by the President when public welfare so requires and NOT the creation of
municipality.
The Supreme Court declared that the power to create municipalities is
essentially and eminently legislative in character not administrative (not
executive).