G.R. Nos. 162335 and 162605 (SEVERINO M. MANOTOK, ET AL. v. HEIRS OF HOMER L. BARQUE, represented by TERESITA BARQUE HERNANDEZ)

Promulgated:

                                                          August 24, 2010
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DISSENTING OPINION

SERENO, J.:

The function of law in modern societies is to allow a people to forge its common destiny and uphold its shared values in a predictable and orderly manner.  Except in authoritarian regimes where the consent of the governed is immaterial from the point of view of the ruler and where illegitimate force compels obeisance, aspiring modern democracies collectively assign to the State the function of keeping order, not only in the streets, but in a more fundamental way – in meeting expectations that have been spelled out in the legal system. The function of courts, especially that of the Philippine Supreme Court within the State apparatus, is to issue judicial edicts that consistently uphold legitimate expectations to promote stability and not chaos. Thus a decision that introduces instability without an overweening legal reason that has emanated from the people themselves or from the legislature should instinctively be avoided by the Supreme Court. This the majority failed to do.

The Majority Decision accomplished only the following:  (1)  it introduced a stale, formalistic technical requirement into the system of acquisition of friar lands that trumps satisfaction of all the other elements of lawful, effective possession and ownership thereof; (2)  it imbued a rigid meaning into the term “approval” by the Secretary of Agrarian and Natural Resources that ignores the wealth of jurisprudence in administrative law including the notion of operative facts and tacit approval; (3)  it enabled forgers of documents to land to take advantage of the antiquity of a land system, or the fact that the land system had endured massive destruction of its records due to fire, to attack land titles made vulnerable by these circumstances; (4)  it encouraged a microscopic scrutiny of all the technical requirements 106 years after the system of disposition of friar lands was set up, thus endangering the property rights of all title holders to friar lands; and (5)  it left open to attack the established legal principles on sales and perfection of contracts.  Contrary to the presumed intent of the majority of my brethren, their opinion has not succeeded in clarifying the legal regime on friar lands but has instead created dangers for the system of property rights in the Philippines.

Thus, I lend my voice to the Dissenting Opinions of Justices Carpio and Carpio Morales. The majority should have considered the reasoning and objectives behind the Carpio and Carpio Morales Dissenting Opinions as promotive of property rights. Without stability of property rights, the country’s economic development process and the pursuit of each man’s right to happiness will in the long run be negated. This in turn up-ends expectations on the part of the body politic that transactions between property right holders and transferees of such rights will be respected.  This respect for the sanctity of such transactions is supposed in turn to create a virtuous cycle of commerce, the end result being that of a prosperous wealth-creating system.  What the Majority Decision did is exactly opposite the intent of our Constitution, when, in various provisions, it makes a stable market mechanism equivalent to economic due process.  In Article II, section 5 of the Constitution, the protection of property is deemed essential for the enjoyment by all the people of the blessings of democracy.  The just and dynamic social order described in Section 9 of the same Article envisions a market system where transactions validly entered upon are upheld by courts.  Article II, section 1 in effect guarantees that the possession of all the requisites for title-holding by persons not be disturbed save by superior legal bases.

Should the legal system fail to promote the stability of property rights, there will be an increase in the uncertainty surrounding economic outcomes.  If stability cannot be ensured and there is a lack of credible commitment on the part of the ruling body to safeguard the rights of the right-bearers (i.e the holders of rights to property), the value of property is undermined by risk and there is far less incentive for investment. The choices economic entities make will be severely limited, being hampered by these disincentives, and as a result, economic growth will drop.  Unpredictability and uncertainty with regard to future values, as well as the inefficiencies of outcomes brought about by an uneven application of distributive arrangements of property rights, will assail the very foundations of our economic system.  The Majority Decision throws into disarray the functional order of property laws.

When the Court in effect says that the following features of the Manotoks’ claims are trumped by the lack of affixation of a signature ── which the law in any case pronounces as but ministerial and thus superfluous ── it in effect contradicts the logic of the Torrens system and the property rights system on which it is based.  For one, it conveys a message to the public that 77-year possession, payment of realty taxes, and a plethora of documentary evidence are not enough to overturn a single technical detail which should have been in the first place supplied by the Government, not by the Manotoks. Secondly, it is simply wrong for the Court to ignore the remedial intent of DENR Memorandum Order No. 16-05, when the Order tries to supply a legal solution to the problems created by the failure of the Secretary of the Interior/Agriculture and Natural Resources to affix his signature to Deeds of Conveyance of friar lands.

While the private parties are expected to seek reconsideration of the Majority Decision, the Government is faced with a choice created by the unexpected windfall this Court has granted it in the form of the reverted land ──  whether to live with and profit by the Majority Decision, or to seek its reconsideration because of the over-all danger that the decision poses to the system of property rights. It can assert that DENR Memorandum Order No. 16-05 is the State’s remedial measure intended to set to rest whatever doubts may have lingered regarding the legal requirements on friar lands. It must carefully and correctly assess  the situation arisen from the Majority Decision that now confronts the State. After all, it will be the Government that will need to face the economic fall-out from an unstable property rights regime.

                         MARIA LOURDES P. A. SERENO


Source: http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/jurisprudence/2010/august2010/162335_sereno.htm