DOCTRINES and RULES ON CONSTRUCTION EMPLOYED BY SUPREME COURT

IN DECIDING the CHUA v. CSC case 

The Supreme Court construed RA 6683 by Departing from Literal Interpretation.

Employed Ratio Legis by interpreting the law according to the spirit or reason of the
law.

Interpretation of Words using Statutory Definition

Due to the impossibility of reconciling the conflicting interpretations of the parties, the
Court is called upon to define the different classes of employees in the public sector
(i.e. government civil servants). The court resorted to Interpretation of Words to
properly construe RA 6683. It required the definition of regular, temporary, casual
and emergency employees which were enumerated as eligible to avail the Early
Retirement Law benefits. It was discovered that The Labor Code in Art. 280 (P.D. No.
492, as amended) deems an employment regular where the employee has been
engaged to perform activities which are usually necessary or desirable in the usual
business or trade of the employer. No equivalent definition can be found in P.D.No. 807
(promulgated on 6 October 1975, which superseded the Civil Service Act of 1965 —
R.A. No. 2260) or in the Administrative Code of 1987 (Executive Order No. 292
promulgated on 25 July 1987). The Early Retirement Law itself (Rep. Act No. 6683)
merely includes such class of employees (regular employees) in its coverage, unmindful
that no such specie is employed in the public sector. The Appointment Status of
employees in the government are 1) career service (Permanent or Temporary) 2) Non-
career service (such as elective officials, cabinet secretaries, contractual personnel,
casual, emergency and seasonal personnel). The court also sought for the statutory
definition of Co-terminous employment.

Taking into consideration the definition of the different employment status in the
government sector the Supreme Court applied the Doctrine of Necessary
Implication in their decision

Lydia Chua, Petitioner was established to be a co-terminous employee,  a non-career

civil servant, like casual and emergency employees. The Supreme Court sees no solid
reason why the latter are extended benefits under the Early Retirement Law but the
former are not. It will be noted that Rep. Act No. 6683 expressly extends its benefits for
early retirement to regular, temporary, casual and emergency  employees. But
specifically excluded from the benefits are uniformed personnel of the AFP including
those of the PC-INP. It can be argued that, expressio unius est exclusio alterius  which
means that express mention of one person, thing or consequence implies of all the
others, since Co-terminous employees are not expressly mentioned to be excluded from
the coverage of RA 6683 however the applicable maxim in this case is the doctrine
of necessary implication  which holds that “what is implied in a statute is as
much a part thereof as that which is expressed”. Every statute is understood, by
implication, to contain all such provisions as may be necessary to effectuate its object
and purpose. No substantial differences exist between casual, emergency, seasonal,
project, co-terminous or contractual personnel. All are tenurial employees with no fixed
term, non-career, and temporary. Thus, to extend the benefits to the non-career
employees like the casual and emergency employees and exclude co terminous
employees will violate the equal protection clause as provided in Art. III Sec. 1 of the
1987 Constitution since they are similarly situated. Hence, to give life to RA 6683, the
doctrine of necessary implication should be applied and co-terminous employees who
have rendered the required government service should be deemed included.

Construction in favor of right and justice. Any doubt in the construction of statute
should be resolve in favor of right and justice

The Court believes, and so holds, that the denial by the respondents National Irrigation
Authority (NIA) and Civil Service Commission (CSC) of petitioner’s application for early
retirement benefits under R.A. No. 6683 is unreasonable, unjustified, and
oppressive, as petitioner had filed an application for voluntary retirement within a
reasonable period and she is entitled to the benefits of said law. In the interest of
substantial justice, her application must be granted; after all she served the
government not only for two (2) years — the minimum requirement under the law but
for almost fifteen (15) years in four (4) successive governmental projects.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court also employed Legislative History as an aid to

construction.

Legislative history refers to all antecedents of the statute from its inception until its
enactment. It includes President’s message, explanatory notes, public hearings, the
SPONSORSHIP SPEECH and many other events that happened before final approval of
the statute.
In the case at bar, the Supreme Court cited the sponsorship speech of Congressman
Daragon. The Supreme Court stated that “During the sponsorship speech of
Congressman Dragon (re: Early Retirement Law), in response to Congressman
Dimaporo's interpellation on coverage of  state university employees who are extended
appointments for one (1) year, renewable for two (2) or three (3) years,  he explained:

This Bill covers only those who would like to go on early retirement and
voluntary separation. It is irrespective of the actual status or nature of the
appointment one received, but if he opts to retire under this, then he is covered.
DOCTRINES and RULES ON CONSTRUCTION EMPLOYED BY SUPREME COURT
IN DECIDING the KRIVENKO vs ROD case 

Ratio Legis

Words must be subservient to the intent and not the intent to the words. The legislative
intent of the legislature in enacting legislation may sometimes be considered by the
judiciary when interpreting the law. The judiciary may attempt to assess the legislative
intent where legislation is ambiguous, or does not appear to directly or adequately
address a particular issue or when the words used by the legislature can be interpreted
in many ways

Delegate Ledesma, Chairman of the Committee on Agricultural Development of the

Constitutional Convention, in a speech delivered in connection with the national policy
on agricultural lands, said: "The exclusion of aliens from the privilege of acquiring
public agricultural lands and of owning real estate is a necessary part of the Public Land
Laws of the Philippines to keep pace with the idea of preserving the Philippines for the
Filipinos." And, of the same tenor was the speech of Delegate Montilla who said: “With
the complete nationalization of our lands and natural resources it is to be understood
that our God-given birth right should be one hundred percent in Filipino hands lands
and natural resources are immovables and as such can be compared to the vital organs
of a person's body, the lack of possession of which may cause instant death or the
shortening of life. If we do not completely nationalize these two of our most important
belongings, I am afraid that the time will come when we shall be sorry for the time we
were born. Our independence will be just a mockery, for what kind of independence are
we going to have if a part of our country is not in our hands but in those of foreigners?"

Professor Aruego in his book “Framing of the (1935) Philippine Constitution” said that
since the opening days of the Constitutional Convention one of its fixed and dominating
objectives was the conservation and nationalization of the natural resources of the
country. This is ratified by the members of the Constitutional Convention who will then
become members of the Supreme Court, namely, Mr. Justice Perfecto, Mr. Justice
Briones, and Mr. Justice Hontiveros.

Construction to accomplish purpose

The meaning of a word or phrase used in a statute may be qualified by the purpose
which induced the legislature to enact the statute. The purpose may indicate whether
to give a word or phrase an ordinary, popular, technical, legal, commercial, restricted,
or expansive meaning. In construing a word or phrase, the court should adopt that
interpretation that accords best with the manifest purpose of the statute or promotes or
realizes its object. Where the language of a statute is fairly susceptible of two or more
constructions, that construction should be adopted which will most tend to give effect
to the manifest intent of the lawmaker and promote the object for which the statute
was enacted, and a construction should be rejected which would tend to render
abortive other provisions of the statute and to defeat the object which the legislator
sought to attain by its enactment.

Certain expressions which appear in Constitutions are obviously technical; and where
such words have been in use prior to the adoption of a Constitution, it is presumed that
its framers and the people who ratified it have used such expressions in accordance
with their technical meaning. It is a fundamental rule that, in construing constitutions,
terms employed therein shall be given the meaning which had been put upon them,
and which they possessed, at the time of the framing and adoption of the instrument. If
a word has acquired a fixed, technical meaning in legal and constitutional history, it will
be presumed to have been employed in that sense in a written Constitution.

At the time the Constitution was adopted, lands of the public domain were classified in
our laws and jurisprudence into agricultural, mineral, and timber, and that the term
"public agricultural lands" was construed as referring to those lands that were not
timber or mineral, and as including residential lands. In the case at bar, the phrase
"public agricultural lands" appearing in section 1 of Article XIII of the Constitution must
be construed as including residential lands, and this is in conformity with a legislative
interpretation given after the adoption of the Constitution.

Statute construed as a whole

The law must not be read in truncated parts, its provisions must be read in relation to
the whole law. The statute's clauses and phrases must not, consequently, be taken as
detached and isolated expressions, but the whole and every part thereof must be
considered in fixing the meaning of any of its parts in order to produce a harmonious
whole. A word or phrase repeated in a statute will bear the same meaning throughout
the statute, unless a different intention appears. Where words have been long used in a
technical sense and have been judicially construed to have a certain meaning, and have
been adopted by the legislature as having a certain meaning prior to a particular
statute in which they are used, the rule of construction requires that the words used in
such statute should be construed according to the sense in which they have been so
previously used, although the sense may vary from strict literal meaning of the words.

Hence, Sections 1 and 5 of Article XIII of the 1935 Constitution must, therefore, be
read together for they have the same purpose and the same subject matter. It must be
noticed that the persons against whom the prohibition is directed in Section 5 are the
very same persons who under Section 1 are disqualified "to acquire or hold lands of the
public domain in the Philippines." And the subject matter of both sections is the same,
namely, the non-transferability of "agricultural land" to aliens.
Since "agricultural land" under Section 1 includes residential lots, the same technical
meaning should be attached to "agricultural land under Section 5. The only difference
between "agricultural land" under Section 5, is that the former is public and the latter
private. But such difference refers to ownership and not to the class of land. The lands
are the same in both sections, and, for the conservation of the national patrimony,
what is important is the nature or class of the property regardless of whether it is
owned by the State or by its citizens.

Doctrine of Necessary Implication

"The doctrine states that what is implied in a statute is as much a part thereof as that
which is expressed. Every statute is understood, by implication, to contain all such
provisions as may be necessary to effectuate its object and purpose...“
It thus is clear that public agricultural land is not within the contemplation of inalienable
natural resources. Public agricultural land is thus alienable. The term 'alienable', taking
root from 'alienation', is described under Act 2874 of 1919 to mean “…any of the
methods authorized by this Act for the acquisition, lease, use or benefit of the lands of
the public domain other than timber or mineral lands.”
Act 2874 is likewise a relevant piece of legislation in this discussion, because it compiled
the laws relative to the lands of the public domain. Under this act, Agricultural Land is
also synonymous to: Alienable or disposable.