Cruz and Europa v. Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources

instructions admonished the commander to commit no aggressive act which might arouse native hostility.[87] Spanish colonial laws recognized and respected Filipino landholdings including native land occupancy.[88] Thus, the Recopilación de Leyes de las Indias expressly conferred ownership of lands already held by the natives.[89] The royal decrees of 1880 and 1894 did not extinguish native title to land in the Philippines. The earlier royal decree, dated June 25, 1880, provided that all those in "unlawful possession of royal lands" must legalize their possession by means of adjustment proceedings,[90] and within the period specified. The later royal decree, dated February 13, 1894, otherwise known as the Maura Law, declared that titles that were capable of adjustment under the royal decree of 1880, but for which adjustment was not sought, were forfeited. Despite the harsh wording of the Maura Law, it was held in the case of Cariño that the royal decree of 1894 should not be construed as confiscation of title, but merely as the withdrawal of the privilege of registering such title.[91] Neither was native title disturbed by the Spanish cession of the Philippines to the United States, contrary to petitioners' assertion that the US merely succeeded to the rights of Spain, including the latter's rights over lands of the public domain.[92] Under the Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898, the cession of the Philippines did not impair any right to property existing at the time.[93] During the American colonial regime, native title to land was respected, even protected. The Philippine Bill of 1902 provided that property and rights acquired by the US through cession from Spain were to be administered for the benefit of the Filipinos.[94] In obvious adherence to libertarian principles, McKinley's Instructions, as well as the Philippine Bill of 1902, contained a bill of rights embodying the safeguards of the US Constitution. One of these rights, which served as an inviolable rule upon every division and branch of the American colonial government in the Philippines,[95] was that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."[96] These vested rights safeguarded by the Philippine Bill of 1902 were in turn expressly protected by the due process clause of the 1935 Constitution. Resultantly, property rights of the indigenous peoples over their ancestral lands and ancestral domains were firmly established in law. Nonetheless, the Solicitor General takes the view that the vested rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands and domains were "abated by the direct act by the sovereign Filipino people of ratifying the 1935 Constitution."[97] He advances the following arguments: The Sovereign, which is the source of all rights including ownership, has the power to restructure the consolidation of rights inherent in ownership in the State. Through the mandate of the Constitutions that have been adopted, the State has wrested control of those portions of the natural resources it deems absolutely necessary for social welfare and existence. It has been held that the State may impair vested rights through a legitimate exercise of police power. Vested rights do not prohibit the Sovereign from performing acts not only essential to but determinative of social welfare and existence. To allow otherwise is to invite havoc in the established social system. x x x Time-immemorial possession does not create private ownership in cases of natural resources that have been found from generation to generation to be critical to the survival of the Sovereign and its agent, the State.[98] Stated simply, the Solicitor General's argument is that the State, as the source of all titles to land, had the power to re-vest in itself, through the 1935 Constitution, title to all lands, including ancestral lands and ancestral domains. While the Solicitor General admits that such a theory would necessarily impair vested rights, he reasons out that even vested rights of ownership over ancestral lands and ancestral domains are not absolute and