The Bangus Ultimatum

Deep into the night, a majority of the members of the Lower House are plotting to knife the Republic as we sleep.

So I’m stuck in another losing battle, doing research for another certiorari petition that could either mean everything, or be totally useless. A cert petition against the House is always a long shot, but one has to try. One should always try.

This is a problem of constitutional interpretation. Representative Jose De Venecia and the rest of Malacañang’s lemmings have interpreted Article XVII Section 1 of the Constitution (the all-important amendments provision) to mean that they can smother the Senate with raw numbers, and amend the Constitution notwithstanding the Senate’s opposition.

A crude, superficial reading of the Constitutional provision’s text can support that interpretation. We want to convince the Supreme Court (and everyone) that this interpretation is wrong: it’s shallow and stupid and just doesn’t fit.

The Constitution is code. Beneath this code is an informational underspace, a substructure of history and values. Evidence of original intent. Every first year law student is taught in her first semester seek out this intent. The text of the Constitution, standing on its own, is problematic. The structure of the Constitution, taken as a whole, and the records of the 1986 Constitutional Commission that trace design decisions of its framers, on the other hand, give a picture of what the Constitution ought to mean. Bicameralism is there by design. It embodies values that we have chosen, for good or bad, as a polity. A bicameral structure was put in place precisely to diffuse the power of Congress, and prevent it precisely from doing the kind of rented, unilateral clusterfuck half of it is doing right now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Political Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.