Cruz and Europa v. Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources

of the public domain under lease or concession, subject to prior rights, homestead rights of small settlers, and the rights of indigenous communities to their ancestral lands.[20] Sec. 17. The State shall recognize, respect, and protect the rights of indigenous cultural communities to preserve and develop their cultures, traditions, and institutions. It shall consider these rights in the formulation of national plans and policies.[21] Sec. 12. The Congress may create a consultative body to advise the President on policies affecting indigenous cultural communities, the majority of the members of which shall come from such communities.[22] IPRA was enacted precisely to implement the foregoing constitutional provisions. It provides, among others, that the State shall recognize and promote the rights of indigenous peoples within the framework of national unity and development, protect their rights over the ancestral lands and ancestral domains and recognize the applicability of customary laws governing property rights or relations in determining the ownership and extent of the ancestral domains.[23] Moreover, IPRA enumerates the civil and political rights of the indigenous peoples; [24] spells out their social and cultural rights;[25] acknowledges a general concept of indigenous property right and recognizes title thereto;[26] and creates the NCIP as an independent agency under the Office of the President. [27] Preliminary Issues A. The petition presents an actual controversy. The time-tested standards for the exercise of judicial review are: (1) the existence of an appropriate case; (2) an interest personal and substantial by the party raising the constitutional question; (3) the plea that the function be exercised at the earliest opportunity; and (4) the necessity that the constitutional question be passed upon in order to decide the case.[28] Courts can only decide actual controversies, not hypothetical questions or cases.[29] The threshold issue, therefore, is whether an "appropriate case" exists for the exercise of judicial review in the present case. An "actual case or controversy" means an existing case or controversy which is both ripe for resolution and susceptible of judicial determination, and that which is not conjectural or anticipatory,[30] or that which seeks to resolve hypothetical or feigned constitutional problems.[31] A petition raising a constitutional question does not present an "actual controversy," unless it alleges a legal right or power. Moreover, it must show that a conflict of rights exists, for inherent in the term "controversy" is the presence of opposing views or contentions.[32] Otherwise, the Court will be forced to resolve issues which remain unfocused because they lack such concreteness provided when a question emerges precisely framed from a clash of adversary arguments exploring every aspect of a multi-faceted situation embracing conflicting and demanding interests.[33] The controversy must also be justiciable; that is, it must be susceptible of judicial determination.[34] In the case at bar, there exists a live controversy involving a clash of legal rights. A law has been enacted, and the Implementing Rules and Regulations approved. Money has been appropriated and the government agencies concerned have been directed to implement the statute. It cannot be successfully maintained that we should await the adverse consequences of the law in order to consider the controversy actual and ripe for judicial resolution. It is precisely the contention of the petitioners that the law, on its face, constitutes an unconstitutional abdication of State ownership over lands of the public domain and other natural resources. Moreover, when the