Case Digest (G.R. No. L-58289)
Facts:
Valentino L. Legaspi v. The Honorable Minister of Finance and The Honorable Commissioner and/or the Bureau of Internal Revenue, G.R. No. 58289, July 24, 1982, Supreme Court En Banc, Barredo, J., writing for the Court. Petitioner Valentino L. Legaspi, an incumbent member of the interim Batasang Pambansa, filed a petition asking the Court to declare Presidential Decree No. 1840 (granting tax amnesty and related measures) unconstitutional. He challenged the President’s power to promulgate the decree under what was known as Amendment No. 6 to the 1973 Constitution (as ratified in 1976), claiming that Amendment No. 6 had been rendered inoperative by the constitutional amendments approved in the April 7, 1981 plebiscite.Legaspi’s factual and legal contentions were: (a) Amendment No. 6, which gave the President (then also Prime Minister) standby legislative powers in emergencies, was a creature of the 1976 amendments and is not among the powers reaffirmed by the 1981 amendments; (b) after April 7, 1981 the offices of President and Prime Minister were separated, so the parenthetical reference “(Prime Minister)” in Amendment No. 6 precluded its application under the new arrangement; and (c) because Article VII, Section 11 normally requires concurrence of the Batasang Pambansa to grant amnesty, PD 1840 was invalid for lack of such concurrence.
There were no lower-court proceedings reported: the matter came directly to the Supreme Court as an original petition. The Solicitor General and respondents defended PD 1840, arguing that Amendment No. 6 remained effective after the 1981 amendments and that when the President acts under Amendment No. 6 as a legislator in emergencies, ...(Subscriber-Only)
Issues:
- Is Amendment No. 6 (1976) to the 1973 Constitution still in force after the constitutional amendments approved on April 7, 1981?
- Did the President have constitutional authority to issue Presidential Decree No. 1840 (granting tax amnesty) without the concurrence of the ...(Subscriber-Only)
Ruling:
- (Subscriber-Only)
Ratio:
- (Subscriber-Only)
Doctrine:
- (Subscriber-Only)