THE PATENT PANDEMIC: AN EMPIRICAL CRITICAL AND  COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF  THE PHILIPPINES’ EMERGENCY PATENT LAWS  Raul Gabriel M. Manalo[*] INTRODUCTION MEDICAL ISSUES IN RELATION TO PATENTS A continuous global issue nowadays is in the field of medicine. […]

PHILIPPINE JURISPRUDENCE ON THE LACK OF DUE PROCESS ISSUE ARISING FROM THE APPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF PIERCING THE VEIL OF CORPORATE FICTION: AN ANALYSIS Prof. Amado E. Tayag[*] INTRODUCTION A. Doctrine of Corporate Entity Under the […]

Atty. Lorenz Fernand D. Dantes, in his article “Evaluating Proposals To Create Stronger Privacy Protections For Victim-survivors Of Human Trafficking And Migrant Smuggling Vis-a-vis The Constitutional Right To Freedom Of Speech And Expression,” argues that the enhanced privacy restrictions for victims of human trafficking, as proposed by Senate Bill 2449, is a constitutionally-permissible content-neutral regulation and do not constitute prior restraint. The author adds that while freedom of expression is a fundamental right, it must be balanced with other societal interests, such as the right to privacy of victim-survivors of human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) or domestic violence is concededly a human rights violation and a global public health issue. The term domestic violence refers to abusive behavior in any personal relationship that allows one partner  to intimidate or gain power and control over the other. This is often thought of to occur between married spouses or in other intimate relationships, but it actually refers to any family relationships or persons living in the same home. The United Nations defines gender-based violence as an act of violence that results in physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, girls, men, and boys, as well as threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty. Often, however, it is gender-based violence that is highlighted and protected through gender-based laws. This is equally acknowledged as a violation of fundamental human rights. While women are often the victims of gender-based violence and that violence against men is seemingly non-existent, gender-based violence applies to men on a wide scale. Male abuse is part and parcel of IPV and is, in fact, a subject often disregarded for various reasons. Increasing research has highlighted the health burdens, intergenerational effects, and demographic consequences of such violence. To a wider extent, domestic abuse does not just cover the intentional infliction of physical injury. Oftentimes, especially towards men, domestic abuse covers psychological or mental injury resulting from undue pressure, intimate or sexual deprivation, and, to some extent, financial abuse or the exploitation of one’s income or other financial resources. It also includes the withholding of necessary medical care to treat a partner’s physical and mental health needs by one having the care and responsibility, although the last two may equally be applicable to all genders.

“In 1970, the RICO Act was enacted by the US Congress and was termed the “ultimate hit man” in mob prosecutions. Prosecutors could only pursue mob-related crimes on a case-by-case basis before RICO. Because a different mobster committed each crime, the police were only able to investigate individual criminals rather than a criminal organization as a whole before the enactment of RICO law. Since the legislation is so broad, it is used by both governmental and civil parties against a wide range of legitimate and unlawful businesses. RICO allows any person participating in a corrupt organization to be prosecuted. That implies the government may go after high leadership as well as hitmen and capos in mob charges. RICO created significantly increased punishments. Moreover, while the Act was created to prosecute the Mafia, prosecutors have used it to sue a wide range of organized criminal groups over the last 37 years, including street gangs, gang cartels, corrupt police agencies, and even politicians.” “This paper proposes to legislate criminalizing racketeering activity in the Philippines and to create a law more or less patterned after the US RICO law, an improved version that can better serve our problems with crime syndicates and corrupt politicians.”

The Hague Service Convention establishes a streamlined transmission of judicial and extrajudicial documents from one State Party to another; provides transnational litigants with methods for the service of documents abroad; simplifies and expedites the service of documents abroad; and guarantees that service will be brought to the notice of the recipient in sufficient time. With the Philippines’ accession to the Hague Service Convention, service of summons, pleadings and other court submissions abroad is now simplified and expeditious. The Convention facilitates the service of judicial documents to litigants who are outside the territorial jurisdiction of the Philippine courts, as it provides another mode sanctioned by the 2019 Amended Rules of Court, consequently precluding delay in civil proceedings involving transnational litigants.

“This confluence of factors, decentralization of powers coupled with lack of State mechanism and support and the increased privatization of spaces due to developments undertaken by politico-landowners led to the creation of a privatized city which is characterized by the importance of market value and profitability with the rise of malls, gated communities, and industrial estates without much priority to the social function of space. Due to the creation of the privatized city, there is little to no public realm left that would serve as the sites for negotiation and challenges for power relations to clamor for social justice. The continued rise and expansion of privatized development in the cities and the lack of participation in the spatial design, access or provision of public spaces wherein the city becomes the space upon rights intersect, is left to the whims and discourse of the few which restricts and threatens our fundamental freedoms including the rights to which the public can freely exercise. xxx Reforms of urban governance – the formulation of zoning ordinance through the Comprehensive Land Use Plan does not only contemplate the territorial breadth and extent of the cities, the different sectors involved in its operation, but the comprehensive support and affordability of protection given by the State itself. ”

Red tape, or the excessive regulations and bureaucracies involved in processing documents in the government, has been a bane for the Philippines. This culture of delays and inaction has led to corruption and the country’s lackadaisical performance in an international ease of doing business report. To address this issue, the Philippine government enacted Republic Act (RA) 9485 or the “Anti-Red Tape Act (ARTA) of 2007.” The said law had broad application covering most government agencies. However, its scope was quite narrow—it primarily related to mandating fixed processing times, rather than an assessment of whether the regulatory requirements themselves remained appropriate.

Dr. Jose I. dela Rama, Jr.[1] Alibi is defined as a statement, buttressed by facts and corroborated by incontrovertible evidence, establishing the impossibility for the individual to have committed the act charged against him.  Alibi, in the […]

Supreme courts, as the seat of the judiciary, and constitutional courts, in jurisdictions with specialized constitutional review mechanisms, play an important role in modern democracy. Their independence from the other branches of the government is crucial in maintaining the balance of powers among the different branches. The manner of their appointment is one important factor in assessing their independence, especially against the branches of government with the selecting and appointing power. While there is no settled standard as to how judges and justices of supreme courts and constitutional courts should be appointed, there are various mechanisms that are practiced, each with its own noteworthy advantages and disadvantages.

“With all due respect, the Supreme Court rules on MLAS and CLAS requiring free or pro bono legal aid service for private practitioners are essentially devoid of proper constitutional, legal, factual, and historical basis. They provide for involuntary servitude and regulatory taking of private property without just compensation, and even an undue form of taxation; at the same time, they constitute a breach of international human rights. Exacting gratuitous service by mandatory rules will only encourage public neglect of a constitutional mandate imposed on the government by the sovereign Filipino people. But all these constitutional and human rights infirmities can readily be avoided if legal aid service is engaged by contract and justly compensated or if unpaid private lawyers are retained on a voluntary basis. Under the rule of law and basic recta ratio, there can never be “compelled charity” or a “forced donation” since it is plainly oxymoronic and against commonsensical wisdom. It is high time now that our one government invest more and adequately provide for legal aid as a matter of constitutional duty instead of expediently passing the buck to private lawyers and struggling practitioners in these Covid-19 pandemic times.”

The 1987 Philippine Constitution is described as conventional or enacted, written, and rigid or inelastic. It is clear and definite and is not easily bent or twisted by the legislature or by the courts to meet the fleeting fancies of the moment. It is stable and free from the dangers of temporary popular passion. The downside of having a written constitution lies in the difficulty of its amendment, which prevents the immediate introduction of desired changes. This is particularly true with respect to specific provisions of the 1987 Constitution, which should have been left for Congress to legislate, such as the provisions on national economy and patrimony under Article XII. However, this also holds true to those who wish to introduce contemporary moral values contrary to those clearly enshrined in our Constitution. It is this latter difficulty of introducing changes in a written constitution that inspired the notion that a constitution evolves to comport with “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”

To paint a more vivid picture, the IRR of the National Building Code provides that the size of an average automobile (car) parking slot must be computed at 2.50 meters by 5.00 meters for perpendicular or diagonal parking.46 This is equivalent to 12.5 square meters. If the ideal habitable floor area per inmate is 4.7 square meters, then an inmate would have to share a parking slot with one or two other inmates. Having two inmates in one parking slot space complies with the ideal standard, but adding one more inmate (who, collectively, should have an allowance of 14.1 square meters) already violates the ideal floor area. They will have to share 4.17 square meters each. It seems that to have space equivalent to one parking slot is already a luxury in Philippine jails and prisons—and in terms of treatment as to the facilities wherein they are confined, at least in law, detained and convicted prisoners in the Philippines are treated in the same way. Once more, reality proves to be crueler, since jails managed by the BJMP are more crowded than the prisons managed by BuCor. In fine, the conditions in which an untried prisoner is detained are harsher than that of a convicted prisoner.

Landmark Cases included in Volume 65 of the UST Law Review Journal.

Philippine jails are another realm where social injustice reigns. Notably, there is a connection that can be established between an accused’s length of stay in detention facilities and his ability to pay; financial status has been correlated to one’s inability to exercise the right to bail, and harsher pre-trial practices can also be linked to poorer socioeconomic conditions.

The publication of laws is arguably the most oft-overlooked element in the compliance with due process requirements. After the Court’s categorical pronouncement in Tañada, clarified by its subsequent cases, publication has become almost a non-issue as it became a standard practice in legislation, signifying the final stage in the legislative mill. Thus, after Tañada, no other canonical jurisprudence was promulgated dealing with publication of laws. Rather, much of the Court’s energy was devoted in passing upon cases concerning the other facets of procedural due process, i.e. the twin requirements of notice and hearing, and the substantive validity of statutes. Nonetheless, it seems that the general non-concern on publication with regard to statutes was able to contaminate international law that are domestically applicable. A survey of jurisprudence suggests that the primary concern of litigants was the substantive aspect of international law or compliance with the constitutional methods of their internalization, but not the observance of procedural due process. Indeed, non-publication of international law may appear as a trivial matter, considering the annals of existing literature on jus gentium devotes much of its attention to its deepest complexities, intricacies, and consequences. Considering the magnitude of the spirit of Tañada, non-publication can cast a legitimate doubt on the applicability of international law insofar as the ideas of justice and fair play are concerned. If the Court once held that it is unfair to bind the people with an unpublished piece of legislation crafted by their representatives, would it not be more unfair to bind them with a rule developed by the community of nations itself?

Setting a Concrete Standard For Sustainability: A Critical Assessment and Comparative Analysis of the Sustainability Reports and Compliance of the Three Publicly Listed Cement Manufacturing Companies in the Philippines By Christer James Ray A. Gaudiano* PREFATORY STATEMENT […]

The beauty in the mirror principle is that it neither favors unilateral abrogation of a treaty by the President, exclusively, nor a Senate concurrence to every withdrawal from a treaty made by the President, exclusively. Instead, it accommodates the shared responsibility of the President and the Senate over treaties. At the same time, it recognizes the realities of exigencies that require the President to exercise what Justice Santiago M. Kapunan called ‘on-the-spot decisions that may be imperatively necessary in emergency situations to avert great loss of human lives and mass destruction of property.’ In other words, the mirror principle is substance-dependent because it considers ‘which branch of government has substantive constitutional prerogatives to make law in any particular area of foreign policy.’… Based on the foregoing facts, and any doubts about its validity quashed, the VFA cannot be terminated without Senate concurrence pursuant to the mirror principle. The subject matter of the VFA is foreign military presence in the Philippines, which is required by no less than the 1987 Constitution to be in treaty form, and to be treated as such by the other contracting State, which are both present in the case of the VFA. In addition, the degree of legislative participation in the entrance to the VFA was concurred by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the Senate on May 27, 1999. It is then unequivocal that the withdrawal from the VFA requires the same degree of legislative participation for its entrance, that is, Presidential action with Senate concurrence.

Peer-to-peer sexual harassment is a relatively new species of gender-based sexual harassment under Philippine law. Through the inclusion of punishable conduct of such nature in the Safe Spaces Act of 2019, Congress has recognized the need to update the definition of sexual harassment to cover acts committed between peers taking place in online and public spaces.

This article intends to discuss the changes introduced by the Revised Corporation Code(RCC) championing the four (4) main reform clusters, provide insights on such changes and recent circulars issued by the SEC, and discuss additional measures that may be further adopted to better achieve the laudable objectives of the RCC.

The online release of UST Law Review Volume 65.

“No less than the 1987 Philippine Constitution mandates that “[t]he President shall have the power to veto any particular item or items in an appropriation, revenue, or tariff bill, but the veto shall not affect the item or items to which he does not object.”

HONGKONG BANK INDEPENDENT LABOR UNION v. HONGKONG AND SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION LIMITED: Agreements must be kept; the CBA governs the relationship of employers and their employees. By: Pio Vincent R. Buencamino[1]   I. CBA is the law […]

On May 11, 2018, the Supreme Court of the Philippines, in one fell swoop, ousted its own Chief Justice. The decision in Republic v. Sereno took the Office of Solicitor General’s (OSG) position that even impeachable officials can be removed from office via a quo warranto petition. The decision discarded the traditional concept of removing impeachable officials from office only through impeachment proceedings. Sereno’s removal even prompted Associate Justice Marvic M. V. F. Leonen to call it a “legal abomination.”

The Maria Clara Doctrine or the Women’s Honor Doctrine became part of Philippine jurisprudence in the 1960 case of People v. Taño.Based on Maria Clara’s character from Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, the doctrine provides the presumption that “women, especially Filipinos, would not admit that they have been abused unless that abuse had happened”. This doctrine implies that the testimony of the alleged victim by itself may be sufficient to sustain a conviction.

Jura Regalia is the State exercising its sovereign power as the owner of lands of the public domain and of the patrimony of the nation, [2] embodied under Article XII of the 1987 Philippine Constitution. [3] In the interest of quality and efficiency, the State began turning over its resources to private entities to distribute the burden of fulfilling its citizen’s needs.

It is a settled principle that laws shall have no retroactive application. However, a penal law that is favorable to the accused can be applied retroactively, provided that the accused is not a habitual criminal.

Editor’s Note on the 70th Anniversary of the UST Law Review In 1950, the UST Law Review was founded with Civil Law student Andres Narvasa as its first Editor-in-Chief. Narvasa would later become Dean of the UST […]

The cornerstone of any functioning democratic country is the freedom of speech, a fundamental facet of which is the right to participate in electoral processes.

We would like to congratulate our esteemed alumna, Judge Katlyn Anne Aguilar for being the newly appointed judge of the Metropolitan Trial Court of Valenzuela City.

Are you a part of the ULR family? We would like to stay in touch. We would greatly appreciate if you could fill out this form or you can also share this form with other ULR Alumni […]

Update on the Modified Guidelines on Imposition of Interest Rates.

The current batch of understudies passed the UST LAW REVIEW UNDERSTUDY PROGRAM, and are now a STAFF member of the Law Review. Their admission to the staff members is further evidence of our confidence in their potential. […]