US v. Vaquilar

Art. 38, Civil Code. Minority, insanity or imbecility, the state of being a deaf-mute, prodigality and civil interdiction are mere restrictions on capacity to act, and do not exempt the incapacitated person from certain obligations, as when the latter arise from his acts or from property relations, such as easements.

Appellant killed his wife and daughter while wounding others with a bolo. Witnesses testify that he seemed insane during and after the commission of the crimes:

1. There was no known disagreement between the family members of the appellant prior to the event.
2. Appellant looked like a mad man; crazy because he would cut everybody at random without paying attention to who it was.
3. He was quiet during his time in prison and cried out every other night, “What kind of people are you to me, what are you doing to me, you are beasts.”

Confronted with the issue of whether or not the Vaquilar was mentally deranged during the commission of the crime, the Supreme Court ruled in the negative.

“There is a vast difference between an insane person and one who has worked himself up into such a frenzy of anger that he fails to use reason or good judgment in what he does. Being crazy is a state wherein a person is merely acting out of the ordinary whereas being insane means acting with an unsound, perhaps diseased, mind. Not applying restraint to anger or passion makes the appellant criminally liable. The testimonies do not prove insanity, they merely point to hysteric acts.”

Further, in People v. Mortimer, the SC distinguished passion and insanity as follows:

“Passion and insanity are very different things, and whatever indulgence the law may extend to person under provocation, it does not treat them as freed from criminal responsibility.”

In People v. Foy, the court said:

“The heat of passion and feeling produced by motives of anger, hatred, or revenge, is not insanity.”

Carrillo v. Jaojoco and Jaojoco

Art. 39. The following circumstances, among others, modify or limit capacity to act: age, insanity, imbecility, the state of being a deaf-mute, penalty, prodigality, family relations, alienage, absence, insolvency and trusteeship. The consequences of these circumstances are governed in this Code, other codes, the Rules of Court, and in special laws. Capacity to act is not limited on account of religious belief or political opinion.

In this case, Miguela Carrillo, as sister of deceased Adriana Carrillo and current administratrix of the latter’s estate, brought action to the CFI Cavite for the annulment of the document of because her sister was declared mentally incapacitated nine days after the transaction. She was confined in the hospital (and was there for the duration of the period) a month before the transaction occurred. The issue was whether or not Adriana was mentally incapacitated at the time the document of sale was executed.

The plaintiff’s attempt to prove that Adriana was mentally deranged was insufficient. Being confined in a hospital does not prove insanity. Her doctor testified that her sickness did not affect her head but only ½ of her body. Documents produced before the Court before the execution of the document of sale, shows complex tasks done by Adriana which couldn’t be done by a mentally incapacitated person.

Joaquin v. Navarro

Art. 43, Civil Code. If there is doubt, as between two or more persons who are called to succeed each other, as to which of them died first, whoever alleges the death of one prior to the other, shall prove the same; in the absence of proof, it is presumed that they died at the same time and there shall be no transmission of rights from one to the others.

Rule 123, section 69 (ii) of the Revised Rules of Court. When two persons perish in the same calamity, such as wreck, battle, or conflagration, and it is not (1) shown who died first, and there are no (2) particular circumstances from which it can be inferred, the survivorship is presumed from the probabilities resulting from the strength and age of the sexes according to the following rules…

In Joaquin v. Navarro, the pertinent facts are that the father, mother and son died during the liberation of Manila, 1946. They were both on a building which was on fire and which was being monitored by Japanese soldiers who would shoot those who tried to escape. The son, upon attempting the escape, was shot and killed. Minutes later, the building collapsed therefore killing both parents as well. The question of who died first was important in determining who would inherit. The Supreme Court held the argument that Sec. 69 (ii) of Rule 123 of the Rules of Court repealed Art. 43 of the Civil Code was not relevant because neither of the provisions are applicable in the case at bar. Both provisions, as their language implies, are intended as a substitute for facts, and so are not to be applied when there are facts. In this case, the son died first. The facts are adequate to solve the problem of survivorship without the need for statutory presumptions.

Thomas Hobbes

Background: The Puritan Revolution and the two civil wars of England marked the turning point of English hegemony. Other factors involved religious liberty, constitutional sovereignty, and the economic and social participation of the merchant class.

Hobbes wrote the Leviathan, his greatest work, after the beheading of Charles I when Parliament under Cromwell gained power in England. The Leviathan is not an apology for the Stuart monarchy but the first general theory of politics in the English language.

Hobbes’ state of nature: men are in a condition of war of every man against every man. There is:

“continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

According to him, men are naturally equal in mind and body. As to strength of body, the weakest has enough strength to kill the strongest, either by slaying him secretly or by allying himself with others for that purpose. With regard to mental faculties, Hobbes finds an even greater natural equality:

“Prudence is a matter of time and experience that can be acquired by anybody.”

“Most persons think that they have more wisdom than their fellow men, but this in itself, is proof that men are equal rather than unequal. And it is from this basic equality of men that serves as the principal source for trouble and misery.”

“The fear of death is the passion that inclines men to peace. Though man has the capacity to learn prudence and moderation from this his fear of death, his desire for power and glory may tempt him to break his promise because covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”

Hobbes was against the Church:

“And if a man considers the origin of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.”

Regarding laws:

“There can be no unjust laws because laws are the rules of the just and unjust.”

According to Hobbes, good and evil are not ethical qualities of an object or action, but merely expressions of an individual’s feelings about them. (Emotive theory of value.)

“But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he calls good; and the object of his hate or aversion, evil, and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable.”

Source of legislation:

“The desire, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from these passions till they know a law that forbids them, which till laws be made they cannot know, nor can any law be made till they agreed upon the person that shall make it.”

General rule of reason:

“That every man ought to endeavor peace as far as he has hope of obtaining it, and when he cannot obtain  it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.”

The first fundamental law of nature therefore is to ’seek peace and follow it’ but the right of nature is to ‘defend ourselves by all means.’

“For man by nature chooses the lesser evil, which is the danger of death resulting, rather the greater, which is certain and present death in not resisting.”

Bodin

Politiques – men who wanted to unite France culturally and religiously by expressing toleration. Their motives were best exemplified by Michel de ‘Hopital, chavelier of France, who urged to get rid of:

“these devilish words, these names of party, faction, of sedition, Lutheran, Huguenot, Papist. A man does not cease to be a citizen for being excommunicated.”

In his Six Books of the State, Bodin expresses a desire for strong government that makes contented and secure citizenship possible. Bodin distinguishes the government from the state the exercise of sovereign function (which may be limited) from the sovereign itself (which is perpetual). He saw more clearly than anyone before him that the essence of sovereignty consists in the making of general laws.

During the Middle Ages, the law was something that was found by judges, not made by legislators; the process of the creation of the law was thought of as a slow and imperceptible synthesis of the immemorial custom of the law, the law of nature, and the will of the land.

“A state is sovereign if it is not legally subject to the authority of another state and if its relations to other states are carried on in accordance with international, rather than municipal laws. This definition does not necessarily imply factual independence. As long as their dependence is one of fact rather than that of law, states are sovereign.”

Bodin advises the ruler of the country not to forcibly impose his own religion because:

“the more the will of men is forced, the more it becomes obstinate.”

Regarding revolution:

“No cause of revolution is more important than the excessive wealth of the few and the extreme poverty of the many.”

Bodin was strongly opposed to the equality of property:

“The foundation of the state is good faith, and the equalization of property subverts the state by destroying legitimate expectations and conventions.”

The Protestant Reformation

There were attempts by the Church to reconcile the Christian community but when these reform movements from within failed, revolution from without took its place.

Some of the reformers believed that hope lay in reforming Christians as individuals.

Christian humanists believed that the church could be reformed through an enlightened fusion of the ethics of early Christianity with the humanism of classical culture.

When reform didn’t work, revolutionaries like Martin Luther (Secular Authority: To What Extent It Should be Obeyed) in Germany and John Calvin (Institutes of Christian Religion) in France took action by means of gathering support from socio-political powers.

After Luther’s death, the Religious Peace of Augsburg settled the problem of religious division in the German States by the principle of “cuius regio euis religio” – the ruler of the country determined the religion of its inhabitants.

Massacre of St. Bartholomew (Aug. 24, 1572) – thirty thousand Huguenots lost their lives; head of the faction was Admiral Caligny. His head was sent to the Pope. Deprived of its leaders, a mass of tracts were written by the Huguenots – the most famous of these was the Vindicae Contra Tyrannus or “A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants” written by an author under the pseudonym Stephen Julius Brutus. The purpose of this document was not to give a general theory of state but to inquire into one of its pivotal issues: the problem of obedience.

“It is much better to follow the law than any one man’s opinion.”

“For if the welfare of the kingdom depends on the observation of the laws, and the laws are enthralled to the pleasure of one man, is it not most certain that there can be no permanent stability in that government?”

Niccolo Machiavelli

Unlike the monarchical regimes of the Renaissance Era, Italy remained the only major area in which vigorous communal life had weathered the storms of wars and invasions, the only area where individual republicanism existed. The virtual destruction of the German Empire by the papacy in the 13th century and the later enslavement of the papacy by the French monarchy, gave the independent Italian city-states new opportunities for self-affirmation and increased self-confidence.

In 1512 Machiavelli lost his job when the republican government, based on French support, was replaced by the absolutist regime of the Medici who had been restored to power with papal help. He was accused of serious crimes, was tortured, found innocent and later banished to a small farm near Florence. This is where he wrote, in enforced idleness, the Prince (1513) in praise of Lorenzo di Medici and the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius (1521).

The Prince was interesting because while Machiavelli betrays republicanism in favor of absolutism, it reaffirms republicanism sentiment; yet this personal preference does not alter his basic views on the process of politics regardless of the form of its constitution: republican or despotic.

The Prince was a reflection not only of man’s political ambitions and passions but of man himself. Machiavelli portrayed real human beings – the shock of recognition has created around his work an aura of mixed horror and fascination… and it is hard to tell which is stronger.

“If one follows the value system of the state, the statesman may violate other value systems such as religion, ethics, or morality.”

Machiavelli thus develops the idea of the reasons of state, under which many acts are permissive, even obligatory, that would be considered heinous crimes if judged in the court of religion or morality.

“For where the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no consideration of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all considerations aside, the only question should be: what course will save the life and liberty of the country?”

This amorality implies not the denial of moral values in all situations, but the affirmation that, in the specific situation of the statesman, the rules of power have priority over those of ethics and morality.

“Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men. He thought of nothing else, and found the occasion for it; no man was ever more able to give assurances, or affirmed things with stronger oaths, and no man observed them less; however, he always succeeded in his deceptions, as he well knew this aspect of things.”

“Religion is a tool of influence and control.”

“Religion is poor man’s reason, ethics and morals put together.”

“Where religion exists, it is easy to introduce armies and discipline.”

But:

“As the observance of divine institutions is the cause of the greatness of the republics, so the disregard of them produces their ruin.”

Machiavelli is critical of Christianity because:

“It glorifies more the humble and contemplative man than the man of action.”

Machiavelli’s Pessimism:

“For how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather to learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation.”

“There are two methods of fighting, the one by the law, the other by force. The first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second. It is therefore necessary for a prince to know well how to use both.”

“The ruler must imitate the fox and the lion – because the lion cannot protect himself from traps and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves.”

“Should a ruler keep faith? A prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist. If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith in you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them.”

“To incur hatred without advantage is the greatest temerity and imprudence.”

Marsilio of Padua

Background: The papacy reached its peak in world affairs after it destroyed the imperial authority of the German monarchs (the Hohenstaufen line). However, this supremacy was to be short-lived under the succession of Pope Boniface VIII, author of the papal bull Unom Sanctum (which stated in its last line, “life is altogether a necessity of salvation for every human creature to be subject of the Roman Pontiff”).

The church’s decline in power stems from the conflict over money. The church needed more money from England and France and decided by papal bull (Clericos Laicos) that laymen do not have the authority to tax the clergy.

Philip IV of France accepted the challenge thrust at him by papal diplomacy and decree by actually kidnapping the Pope at his residence. Boniface died before he could be tried by the French clergy.

In fighting with the German emperors for supremacy, the popes were colliding with the past; in the struggle with the French monarchy, they were up against the strongest single political institution of the next six centuries: the sovereign national state.

The principal revolutionary changes in the late Middle Ages were:

1. The growing vehemence of anti-clerical teaching;
2. The decisive defeat of the papacy;
3. The secularization of life;
4. The rise of the bourgeoisie;
5. The formation of national states.

The developments are most systematically reflected in Marsilio of Padua’s Defender of the Peace (1324) or Defensor Pacis.

In the discussion of forms of the state, Marsilio follows the Aristotelian models that there are good types and its perversions. But he differs radically from Aristotle by stating that in the good forms of government, the ruler governs in accordance with the will of the people. Conversely, the diseased forms of government are for the benefit of the rulers without the consent of the people. His break with Aristotle and the Middle Ages becomes expressly clear in his conception of law as the manifestation of proletariat authority.

The medieval tendency was expressed in St. Thomas Aquinas = “the law is an ordinance of reason for the common good.” For Marsilio:

“The law is the command of the legislator enforceable in the courts.”

See Holmes: “The laws are prophecies of the what the courts will do in fact and nothing more pretentious.” (Positivist conception of law.)

Marsilio believes that the “weightier part” of the citizenry should compose the office of legislation. In effect, therefore, the political impact of the individual citizen depends on whether he belongs to the “weightier part” of society, or whether he is merely a quantitative unit whose political influence is confined to the periodic act of voting.

He is aware of the argument, made then as now, that the majority of men are vicious, undiscerning and stupid, and that the few who are wise, learned, and virtuous should therefore rule. He agrees that the vicious and undiscerning should not make the law, but he denies that most citizens are vicious and undiscerning most of the time:

“All of most of them are of sound reason and have a right desire for the polity and for the things necessary for it to endure.”

“A minimum of optimism about human nature is a basic condition for any faith in democracy, modest and limited as it may be.”

He concedes that only a few have the ability to make wise laws, yet every citizen can be a proper judge of the law. Aristotle:

“The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook.”

Since the active citizens who form the political sovereign cannot themselves carry on the work of legislation, government and administration, there must be a group of citizens who act in the name of the citizenry. Marsilio distinguishes clearly the state as the source of sovereignty from the personnel and processes of government as the instrumentality of the sovereignty.

“Governments established by force or fraud are diseased.”

“The authority of the ruler derives its validity and existence from the discoverable fact of election, and a person becomes a ruler because he is elected, and ‘not by his knowledge of the laws, his prudence, or his moral virtue, although these are qualities of a perfect ruler.’

Marsilio also mentions that many men may possess these qualities yet lacking the formal and empirical authority by election, they are not rulers.

Marsilio’s most revolutionary doctrine is in his analysis of the church. It left a mark on Protestantism by its idea of a congressional authority in the church. The church is a community of believers (universitas fidelium) and as in the political community (universitas civium), the only source of authority is the body of its members.

He calls his treatise the Defender of the Peace because he sees the task of civil government primarily one of peace.

When the conception of the secular national state as the largest sovereign unit displaced the idea of universal papal and imperial authority, the Middle Ages came to a close.

Dante Alighieri

Dante was the author of the most important antipapalist, imperialist tract of the Middle Ages, the De Monarchia, where he asked three questions:

1. Is a world government, ruled by a monarch, necessary for the welfare of the human race?
2. Did the Roman people acquire world dominion by right?
3. Does the authority of the emperor derive directly from God or from some minister, Vicar of God, that is the Pope?

“A world government is necessary for the ’settlement of disputes between states without war’: where there is controversy, there ought to be justice.”

In the most recent and contemporary thinking about the possibilities of world order, it is generally recognized that the first institutional development toward world government is likely to occur in the field of judicial settlement of specific disputes rather than in legislative enactment and executive enforcement of universal laws.

Dante is one of the first writers on the problem of world government to separate the issue of political sovereignty, which must be vested in the control organ of world government, from the issue of cultural autonomy, which the individual nations and nationalities will fully preserve in a political world community.

According to Hegel,

“World history is the world court.”

St. Thomas Aquinas

Background: From the 5th century to the 8th century the main issue confronting western thought was not the struggle of one school against another but the way survival of traditional values and ideas in the aftermath of material and spiritual devastation at an unprecedented scale. But by the end of the 9th century, physical recovery and consolidation had been attained to a considerable extent, and a more independent and typically medieval trend began to emerge: scholasticism. The triumph of Aristotelianism in the 13th century was the work of many men and universities but, above all, it was due to the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas.

To be born, the Church needed Plato (through St. Augustine). To last, it needed Aristotle (through Aquinas).

“Faith and knowledge are not opposing but supplementary modes of understanding God and the world. There is no need to reconcile conflict where there is no conflict.”

“Faith is not contrary to reason but above reason. Articles of faith cannot be intellectually proved; they have to be accepted by an act of will.”

“What man can therefore believe, he cannot know; and what he can know, he cannot believe.”

If theological truth cannot be proved by philosophy, neither can it be disproved. Where it seems to arise, St. Thomas categorically states that faith is higher than knowledge in the hierarchy of truth, and that something must be wrong with philosophy if it seems to contradict revelation because: philosophy is only relatively certain whereas theology is absolutely certain in as must as it is based on divine authority.

“Philosophy is the handmaiden of Theology.”

“The purpose of the state is to promote the good life through virtuous living but it doesn’t stop there; it falls one step short of a higher end – the enjoyment of God.”

“The possession of God can be attained only by divine power. Human government is unable to guide men toward this end. The ministry of the kingdom of God is not in the hands of earthly kings, but of priests – and above all – ‘the chief priest, the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff’, to whom all kings are subject as to Christ himself.”

St. Thomas preferred monarchy unequivocally unlike Aristotle (who hesitated on the grounds that one man who is morally and intellectually superior was unlikely to be found) but sought to delimit the monarch’s power so that it would not degenerate into tyranny.

“Revolutionary resistance to minor tyranny, if successful, is likely to lead to even worse tyranny because the leader of the victorious revolution (fearing to suffer from another what he did to his predecessor) oppresses the subjects with an even more grievous slavery.”

St. Thomas is perhaps the first writer on the problem of revolution who understands its inner dynamic which cannot be halted at will once it is set in motion. He feared that revolution is nearly always a higher prince than the evil it seeks to remedy.

The greatest contribution of the Middle Ages to the stone of civilization is the concept of the supremacy of the law based on the custom of the community.

It was Leo XIII who issued the Encyclical Aeterni Patris on 1879 which mandated that the doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas, “the preeminent guardian and glory of the Catholic Church,” be henceforth be taught in all academia and schools.