That sovereignty resides in the people is the basic axiom in a democratic republican state as established under the Constitution. As an additional postulate, the Constitution adds that all government authority emanates from them.
When it comes to power, said Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the US, “Trust no man, bind him down from mischief, by the strong chains of the Constitution.”
The tripartite system of our government under which power is distributed to the President, the two houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, is the first strong chain to bind these three departments of government, through their officeholders, from mischief. It is well know that the President, Congress and the Supreme Court wield tremendous powers over the lives, properties and fortunes of the people which installed them in the first place. The people constitute the body politic.
But James Madison, another founding father of American constitutional government, has warned that it is not for the people to sit down and relax after having framed the Constitution through their delegates. The Supreme Court during the Commonwealth days when it was presided over by some of the most brilliant Filipino legal minds quoted Madison, concerning the continuing responsibility of the people to guard their constitutional liberty, thus:
“The system itself is not the chief palladium of Constitutional liberty. x x x The people who are the authors of the blessing must also be its guardian. x x x Their eyes must be ever ready to mark, their voices to pronounce x x xaggression on the authority of their Constitution.”
The popular notion is that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of Constitutional questions. This is a shaky proposition as disproved by the acts of the Supreme Court itself which as in many instances reversed its doctrines, including matters constitutional. Moreover, Professor Tribe of Harvard has described judicial pronouncements as of “passing finality x x x for the participatory evolution of political ideas and government process.” “This process,” he adds, “cannot be the special province of any single entity.” As articulated by Justice Laurel:
“We cannot modify the system unless we modify the Constitution, and we cannot modify the Constitution by any subtle process of judicial interpretation and construction.” (67 Phil 451)
Indeed, the root cause of the present standoff between the President and the Supreme Court was the appointment of the present Chief Justice within the prohibited period in the Constitution and the highly controversial and self-serving decision of the Corona Court in the midnight appointment case that followed. (To be continued)