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2 Phil. L.J. 298 (1915-1916)
Philippine Statutory Construction

handle is hein.journals/philplj2 and id is 312 raw text is: PHILIPPINE STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION By GEORGE A. MALCOLM, Dean of the College of Law, University of the Philippines. The courts and public officers generally in the Philippines are guided in their interpretation of the laws by elementary principles to be found in the Codes. * They will also apply the rules of American statutory construction as set forth in standard authorities. t Combining these provisions of the Codes with the leading doctrines established by the Supreme Court of the Philippines and adding a few acceptable and unimpeachable authorities, a miniature text on Philippine Statutory Construc- tion would read as follows: DECLARING L.AWS INVALID Each of the three departments of government and many officials in these depart- ments may be required to pass upon constitutional questions. Only when legal controversies arise do such issues pass out of the realm of the abstract.. It is, there- fore, the peculiar province and obligatory duty of the judiciary under the American political system to declare laws unconstitutional or invalid (the latter the more appro- priate term because of the Philippine status), if they transgress the authority of the legislature. So in the Philippines the courts will pronounce Acts of the Philippine Commission and Legislature repugnant, to the fundamental law to be invalid and void. I The effect of invalidity is that. the invalid act. is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed. § The courts will further apply the well established rule concerning partial invalidity. Where part of a statute is void as repugnant to the Organic Law, while another part is valid, the valid portion, if separable from the invalid, may stand and he enforced. But in order to do this, the valid portion must be so far independent, of the invalid por- tion that it is fair to presume that the Legislature would have enacted it by itself if they had supposed that they could not constitutionally enact the other. Enough must remain to make a complete, intelligible, and valid statute, which carries out the legislative intent. The void provisions must be eliminated without causing results affecting the main purpose of the Act in a manner contrary to the intention • Especially Arts. 3, 4, 5, 7 of the Civil Code; and Sees. 1, 2, 4, 287, 288, 294 of the Code of Civil Procedure taken from the laws of California. Also Sec. 9, Revised Ordinances, City of Manila. t Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, 7th ed., Lewis Sutherland Statutory Construction (leading authority); Black on Interpretation of Laws; and 36 Cyc. 929 will be found cited in the Philippine Reports and the opinions of the Attorney-General. t Ocampo v. Cabangis (1910) 15 Phil: 626, 631; U. S. r. Ten Yu (1912) 24 Phil. 1, 10. Possibly more properly speaking voidable because a court can not repeal a law. Shepard v. Wheeling (1887)'30 W. Va. 479; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, 7th ed., p. 163. J Norton v. Shelby County (1886) 118 U. S. 425, 442, 30 L. Ed. 178; 6 R. C. L. 117. But see Burgess, Political Science ahd Constitutional Law, Vol. II. pp. 327, 365.

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