Professional Documents
Culture Documents
In other words, our Constitution authorizes the nullification of a treaty, not only when it conflicts with
the fundamental law, but also, when it runs counter to an act of Congress.33 the primacy of statutory
law regarding a treaty is expressed in Ichong vs. Hernandez.26 Having in mind the claim that the
National Retail Trade Act was in breach of the Treaty of Amity with China, Ichong has advanced the view,
forming part of its ratio decidendi, thus:
But even supposing that the law infringes upon the said treaty, the treaty is always subject to
qualification or amendment by a subsequent law . . ., and the same may never curtail or restrict the
scope of the police power of the State . . . .
the statute as a source of law with its inherent police power stands
superior to the treaty.
international law deals only with the state and that individuals are not its subject.
In conclusion, the case of Gonzales now implies the following:
Gonzales retains its significance in terms of the serious implications arising from:
(1) It enthrones the supremacy of the legislative enactment over a treaty in a specific constitutional
context, i.e., in the interpretation of the judicial review clause of the 1935 Constitution, in which
statutory law becomes a standard of validity of a treaty. Gonzales affirms: *o+ur Constitution authorizes
the nullification of a treaty, not only when it conflicts with the fundamental law, but, also, when it runs
counter to an act of Congress.34
(2) Statutory law as a source of law holds supremacy over a treaty on constitutional ground, not on the
temporal sequence of the later-in-time principle.
(3) Statutory law does not only prevail over a treaty with unspecified legal effect; it renders a violative
treaty null and void.
(4) Gonzales does away with the doctrine established in Abbas, Lantion, Philip Morris, and Mighty
Corporation that a treaty and a statute are in parity.
(5) It may imply a new element in the interpretation of the Treaty Clause: a treaty concurred in by the
Senate shall be valid and effective as part of the law of the land, provided it does not run counter to
an act of Congress.
statutory law has strengthened its juristic status over
a treaty but without substantive explication, as shown in Lantion, Philip Morris and
Mighty Corporation: In a situation . . . where the conflict is irreconsilable and a choice
has to be made between a rule of international law and municipal law, jurisprudence
dictates that municipal should be upheld by the municipal courts . . . [f]or the reason
that such courts are organs of municipal law and are accordingly bound by it in all
circumstances . . . .