271059/271347/E-02472/E-04036 Concurrence and Dissent Justice Amy C. Lazaro-Javier — Official PDF

Concurrence and Dissent G.R. Nos. 271059, 271347, E-02472, and E-04036 so in a way that excuses the Court from unde1taking the weighing the doctrine actually demands. There is a further, pr!lctical reason for caution. In Araullo, this Court applied the operative fact doctrine only in favor of the recipients of disbursement acceleration program funds who had, in good faith, relied on projects already implemented-while expressly declining to extend the same protection to the authors, proponents, and implementors of •the program, whose good or bad faith the Court left to be determined in the proper proceedings before the Ombudsman or the Sandiganbayan. 14 That distinction was not incidental; it reflected this Court's recognition that the doctrine, if applied indiscriminately, could be read as a blanket judicial clearan.ce of the officers responsible for an unconstitutional act, when the doctrine's true office is only to protect the settled expectations of those who relied on a law before it was struck down. A present, . undifferentiated ruling that the operative fact doctrine applies to the entirety of the invalidated unprogrammed appropriations and SAGF provisions, even before the CoiJ:imiSsion on Audit, the Ombudsman, or other appropriate bodies have had the occasion to examine how these funds were actually used, risks being read, whether by the officers corwemed, by investigative bodies, or bY .the public, as foreclosing inquiry into whether . particular disbursements 'Y~re _atte1id_ed qy irr!c!gul;mty pr bad faith. . . . . . That is not the purpose the doctrine has ever been made to serve. It exists to spare the public ;from the· chaos of unwinding transactions that can no longer practically be undone; it was never meant to serve as a shield against accountability for those responsible for the unconstitutional act in the first place. To rule on its application now, before the facts needed to draw that line are before the Court, risks blurring precisely the distinction Araullo took care to preserve. 14 737 Phil. 457, 625 (2014) [Per J. Bersamin, En Banc]. The Court stated: Nonetheless~ -as Justice Brion ha~ pointed out during t½.e delibe~tions, the doctrine of operative fact does not always apply, and is not always the consequence of every decJaratioii. of constitutional· invalidit<J. It can be invoked only in situations where the nuilificati.on of the effects of ·what used to be 4 vaiid 1aw would result in inequity and injustice; but where no such result }vould ensue1 the general ruie that an unconstitutional law is totally ineffective should apply .. f n that context, as Justice B1:ion hds clarified, the doctrine o/operative fact can apply only to the PAPs that can no longer be undone, and whose benefie:iaries relied in good faith on the validity of the iJiP, but cannot app(y to the auth1Jrs, proponents and implementors of the DAP, unless there are concrete findings of good faith in their favor by the prop~r tribunals determining their criminal, c:ivi!, ad1ninistrative and a.th.er liabilities. (Emphasis supplied)