REQUISITES FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW

When an issue of constitutionality is raised, this Court can exercise its power of judicial review only if
the following requisites are present:

(1) The existence of an actual and appropriate case;

(2) A personal and substantial interest of the party raising the constitutional question;

(3) The exercise of judicial review is pleaded at the earliest opportunity; and

(4) The constitutional question is the lis mota of the case. 58

Section 1, Article VIII of the Constitution states that "(j)udicial power includes the duty of the courts
of justice to settle actual controversies involving rights which are legally demandable and
enforceable." The power of judicial review, therefore, is limited to the determination of actual cases
and controversies.59

An actual case or controversy means an existing case or controversy that is appropriate or ripe for
determination, not conjectural or anticipatory,60 lest the decision of the court would amount to an
advisory opinion.61 The power does not extend to hypothetical questions62 since any attempt at
abstraction could only lead to dialectics and barren legal questions and to sterile conclusions
unrelated to actualities.63

"Legal standing" or locus standi has been defined as a personal and substantial interest in the case
such that the party has sustained or will sustain direct injury as a result of the governmental act
that is being challenged,64alleging more than a generalized grievance.65 The gist of the question of
standing is whether a party alleges "such personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to
assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court
depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions."66 Unless a person is injuriously
affected in any of his constitutional rights by the operation of statute or ordinance, he has no
standing.

Prohibition is a preventive remedy.74 It seeks a judgment ordering the defendant to desist from
continuing with the commission of an act perceived to be illegal.75