February 2, 1979 | 88 SCRA 195
Leovillo C. Agustin, petitioner
Hon. Romeo Edu (Land Transportation Commissioner), Hon. Juan Ponce-Enrile (Minister of National Defense), Hon. Alfredo Juinio (Minister of Public Works, Transportation and Communications), and Hon. Baltazar Aquino (Minister of Public Highways), respondents
FACTS:
On December 2, 1974, President Ferdinand Marcos issued Letter of Instruction (LOI) No. 229, which required all motor vehicles to secure early warning devices (EWD) consisting of a pair of triangular, collapsible, reflectorized plates in red and yellow to be purchased from the Land Transportation Commission. The purposes of this LOI were to prevent accidents caused by vehicular obstructions and to adhere to the road safety standards outlined in the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, which the Philippines had ratified as per PD No. 207.
LOI No. 229 was later amended by LOI No. 479 issued on November 15, 1976. Unlike before where owners of motor vehicles were required to purchase the reflectorized plates from the Land Transportation Commission, LOI No. 479 now made it possible for said owners to buy early warning devices anywhere so long as they adhere to the standards prescribed by the Land Transportation Commissioner.
President Marcos issued a six-month suspension of said LOI, after which he issued another LOI lifting its suspension. On August 29, 1978, Land Transportation Commissioner Romeo Edu issued Memorandum Circular No. 32, which contained LTC Administrative Order No. 1 or the rules and regulations in the implementation of LOI No. 229 as amended.
Leovilo Agustin, a private citizen and owner of a Volkswagen Beetle Car, filed a petition before the SC, assailing the constitutionality of both LOI No. 229 as amended and LTC Administrative Order No. 1. Among others, Agustin claimed that LOI No. 229 was violative of the provisions and delegation of police power, an oppressive, unreasonable, arbitrary, confiscatory, and unconstitutional order that was contrary to the precepts of the New Society. Pending its final resolution, the Court issued a temporary restraining order preventing agencies concerned from implementing both LOI No. 229 as amended and LTC Administrative Order No. 1.
ISSUE:
Whether or not LOI No. 229 as amended violated the constitutional provision on undue delegation of power.
No, the Court ruled that LOI No. 229 as amended falls within the State's police power, and President Marcos' issuance of the same was clearly an exercise of such power. The intent of the law can be clearly seen in the WHEREASes of the assailed LOI (to prevent accidents, safeguard the safety of the public, and adhere to the State's commitment to public international law). The Court later went on a lengthy discourse in defining what police power is:
- "Nothing more or less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty." (Chief Justice Taney, US Supreme Court Chief Justice, 1847)
- "The State authority to enact legislation that may interfere with personal liberty or property in order to promote the general welfare. Persons and property could thus be subjected to all kinds of restraints and burdens in order to achieve the general comfort, health, and prosperity of the State." (Calalang v. Williams)
- "The power to prescribe regulations to promote the health, morals, education, good order or safety, and general welfare of the people." (Primicias v. Fugoso)
- "Inherent and plenary power in the State which enables it to all things hurtful to the comfort, safety, and welfare of society." (Justice Malcolm)
- "The totality of legislative power." (Morfe v. Mutuc)
- "A dynamic agency, suitably vague and far from precisely defined, rooted in the conception that men in organizing the state and imposing upon its government limitations to safeguard constitutional rights did not intend thereby to enable an individual citizen or a group of citizens to obstruct unreasonably the enactment of such salutary measures calculated to communal peace, safety, good order, and welfare."