TUASON vs REGISTER OF DEEDS of CALOOCAN

157 SCRA 613

FACTS:

The petitioners, spouses Tuason, were retired public school teachers who bought a piece of land in
Carmel Farms’ subdivision with funds from their retirement benefits and savings. In virtue of this sale,
Carmel’s torrens title was cancelled and a new one was issued in the name of the Tuasons. Some eight
(8) years thereafter, the petitioners woke up one morning to discover they were no longer the owners of
the land they had purchased. That year, President Marcos, exercising martial law powers, issued P.D.
293 cancelling the certificates of titles of Carmel Farms and declaring the lands covered to be open for
disposition and sale to members of the Malacanang Association.

ISSUE:

Whether or not the president has the power to cancel certificates of titles.

RULING:

No, the president does not have to power to cancel certificates of titles. The decree reveals that Mr.
Marcos exercised an obviously judicial function. Since Mr. Marcos ws never vested with judicial power—
such power as everyone knows, being vested in the Supreme Court and such inferior courts as may be
established by law—the judicial acts done by him were in the circumstances indisputably perpetrated
without jurisdiction. The acts were completely alien to his office as chief executive, and utterly beyond
the permissible scope of the legislative power that he had assumed as head of the martial law regime.

(2)