IX.

RIGHT TO INFORMATION

10. VILLANUEVA VS. JBC (2015)

Facts:

After about a year from being appointed as a MCTC judge, Judge Villanueva applied for
the vacant position of presiding judge in some RTC branches. The JBC however informed him
that he was not included in the list of candidates for such position because the JBCs long-
standing policy requires 5 years of service as judge of first-level courts before one can apply as
judge for second-level courts. Before the SC, he assailed via Rule 65 and Rule 63 with prayer
for TRO and preliminary injunction the policy of JBC on the ground that it is unconstitutional
and was issued with grave abuse of discretion. Allegedly, the policy also violates equal
protection and procedural due process for lack of publication and its non-submission to the UP
Law Center Office of the National Administrative Register (ONAR), adding that the policy
should have been published because it will affect all applying judges. According to the petitioner
he has all the qualifications for the position prescribed by the Constitution and by Congress,
since he has already complied with the requirement of 10 years of practice of law.

RIGHT TO INFORMATION

1. WON the policy of JBC should have been published in the ONAR

No. The JBC policy need not be filed in the ONAR because the publication requirement
in the ONAR is confined to issuances of administrative agencies under the Executive branch
of the government. Since the JBC is a body under the supervision of the Supreme Court, it is
not covered by the publication requirements of the Administrative Code.

2. WON the policy of JBC should have been published

Yes. As a general rule, publication is indispensable in order that all statutes, including
administrative rules that are intended to enforce or implement existing laws, attain binding force
and effect. Exempted from requirement of publication are interpretative regulations and those
merely internal by nature which regulates only the personnel of the administrative agency
and not the public, and the so-called letters of instructions issued by administrative superiors
concerning the rules or guidelines to be followed by their subordinates in the performance of
their duties.

Here, the assailed JBC policy does not fall within the administrative rules and
regulations exempted from the publication requirement. It involves a qualification standard
by which the JBC shall determine proven competence of an applicant. It is not an internal
regulation, because if it were, it would regulate and affect only the members of the JBC and their
staff. Notably, the selection process involves a call to lawyers who meet the qualifications in the
Constitution and are willing to serve in the Judiciary to apply to these vacant positions. Thus,
naturally it follows that potential applicants be informed of the requirements to the judicial
positions, so that they would be able to prepare for and comply with them.

Jurisprudence has held that rules implementing a statute should be published. Thus, by
analogy, publication is also required for the five-year requirement because it seeks to implement
a constitutional provision requiring proven competence from members of the judiciary.

ON THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE POLICY

3. WON the policy of JBC requiring 5-year service is constitutional

Yes. As an offspring of the 1987 Constitution, the JBC is mandated to recommend

appointees to the judiciary and only those nominated by the JBC in a list officially transmitted to
the President may be appointed by the latter as justice or judge in the judiciary. Thus, the JBC is
burdened with a great responsibility that is imbued with public interest as it determines the men
and women who will sit on the judicial bench. While the 1987 Constitution has provided the
qualifications of members of the judiciary, this does not preclude the JBC from having its own
set of rules and procedures and providing policies to effectively ensure its mandate.

4. WON JBC committed grave abuse of discretion in laying down such policy

No. The functions of searching, screening, and selecting are necessary and incidental to
the JBCs principal function of choosing and recommending nominees for vacancies in the
judiciary for appointment by the President. However, the Constitution did not lay down in
precise terms the process that the JBC shall follow in determining applicants qualifications. In
carrying out its main function, the JBC has the authority to set the standards/criteria in choosing
its nominees for every vacancy in the judiciary, subject only to the minimum qualifications
required by the Constitution and law for every position. The search for these long held qualities
necessarily requires a degree of flexibility in order to determine who is most fit among the
applicants. Thus, the JBC has sufficient but not unbridled license to act in performing its duties.

5. WON the policy violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution

No. The equal protection clause is not violated because the classification created by the
challenged policy satisfies the rational basis test.

Substantial distinctions do exist between lower court judges with five year experience
and those with less than five years of experience, like the petitioner, and the classification
enshrined in the assailed policy is reasonable and relevant to its legitimate purpose. The assailed
criterion or consideration for promotion to a second-level court, which is five years experience as
judge of a first-level court, is a direct adherence to the qualities prescribed by the Constitution.
Placing a premium on many years of judicial experience, the JBC is merely applying one of the
stringent constitutional standards requiring that a member of the judiciary be of proven
competence. In determining competence, the JBC considers, among other qualifications,
experience and performance.

Petition is dismissed. The Court ordered the JBC to comply with the publication
requirement.
11. ANTOLIN VS. DOMONDON (2010)

Facts:

Hazel Ma. C. Antolin (Petitioner) failed the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Licensure
Exam she took in October 1997. Convinced she deserved to pass the Exam, she wrote to the
Board of Accountancy (Board), requesting that her answer sheets be re-corrected. She was
shown her answer sheets but since these showed only shaded marks, she was unable to determine
why she failed the Exam.

Consequently, she asked the Board for copies of the questionnaire, her answer sheets, the
answer keys and an explanation of the grading system (collectively, the Examination Papers).
Her request was denied on two grounds:

(1) Section 36, Article III of the Rules and Regulations Governing the Regulation and
Practice of Professionals, as amended by Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) Resolution
No. 332, series of 1994, only allowed access to her answer sheets, and reconsideration of the
result of her examination can be made only on grounds of mechanical error in the grading of the
answer sheets, or malfeasance;

(2) the Board was precluded from releasing the Examination Papers (other than the
answer sheets) by Section 20, Article IV of PRC Resolution No. 338, series of 1994.

The Board later informed her that her exam was investigated and no mechanical error
was found in the grading. Petitioner filed a Petition for Mandamus with Damages, with
application for preliminary mandatory injunction, against the Board and its members before
the Regional Trial Court (RTC), praying that the Board provide her with all documents that
would show whether the Board fairly administered the exam and correctly graded her answers,
and if warranted, to issue to her a certificate of registration as a CPA.

She later amended her Petition to clarify that she only wanted access to the documents
requested, not recorrection of her exam, deleting in the process her original prayer for issuance
of a certificate of registration as CPA. Petitioner passed the May 1998 CPA Licensure Exam and
took her oath as a CPA. Consequently, the RTC denied her application for mandatory injunction
for being moot. She amended her Petition a second time to implead the PRC and to ask, in
addition to access to the documents she had requested, that if warranted, appropriate revisions in
the October 1997 Exam results be made by the Board and the PRC. The RTC considered the
matter moot and dismissed the petition. On her motion, however, the RTC reconsidered the
dismissal, holding that her passing of the subsequent CPA examination did not render the petition
moot because the relief and if warranted, to issue to her a certificate of registration as Certified
Public Accountant was deleted from the original petition. As regards whether she had the
constitutional right to have access to the documents she requested, the RTC resolved to let the
parties first adduce evidence, and to have PRC air its side of the case. The RTC also ordered the
PRC to preserve and safeguard the questionnaire, petitioners answer sheets, and the answer keys
for the October 1997 CPA Licensure Exam. When their motion for reconsideration was denied,
respondents brought the case to the Court of Appeals (CA) which set aside the RTCs decision
and ordered the dismissal of the case because: (1) the petition was mooted when petitioner
passed the May 1998 CPA exam; (2) Section 20, Article IV of PRC Resolution No. 338, series
of 1994, constituted a valid limitation on her right to information and access to government
documents; (3) the Examination Documents were not of public concern, because she merely
sought review of her failing marks; (4) it was not the ministerial or mandatory function of the
respondents to review and reassess the answers to examination questions of a failing examinee;
and (5) she failed to exhaust administrative remedies when she did not elevate the matter to the
PRC before seeking judicial intervention. Petitioner, thus, brought the matter to the Supreme
Court.

RIGHT TO INFORMATION

1. WON petitioner has the constitutional right to have access to the Examination
Papers

Like all the constitutional guarantees, the right to information is not absolute; it is limited
to matters of public concern and is further subject to such limitations as may be provided by
law (Section 7, Article III, 1987 Constitution). Similarly, the States policy of full disclosure is
limited to transactions involving public interest, and is subject to reasonable conditions
prescribed by law (Sec. 28, Art. II, 1987 Constitution). The Court has always grappled with
the meanings of public interest and public concern which embrace a broad spectrum of
subjects which the public may want to know, either because these directly affect their lives, or
simply because such matters naturally arouse the interest of an ordinary citizen, and which are,
in the final analysis, up to the courts to determine on a case by case basis

. National board examinations such as the CPA Board Exams are matters of public
concern. The populace in general, and the examinees in particular, would understandably be
interested in the fair and competent administration of these exams in order to ensure that only
those qualified are admitted into the accounting profession. And as with all matters pedagogical,
these examinations could be not merely quantitative means of assessment, but also means to
further improve the teaching and learning of the art and science of accounting. The Court,
nonetheless, realizes that there may be valid reasons to limit access to the Examination Papers in
order to properly administer the exam. More than the mere convenience of the examiner, it may
well be that there exist inherent difficulties in the preparation, generation, encoding,
administration, and checking of these multiple choice exams that require that the questions and
answers remain confidential for a limited duration. The PRC, however, had not been given an
opportunity to explain the reasons behind their regulations or articulate the justification for
keeping the Examination Papers confidential. (Court remanded the case to the trial court)
OTHER ISSUES

2. WON petitioner may seek judicial intervention to compel the re-correction of her
examination

Any claim for re-correction or revision of petitioners 1997 examination cannot be

compelled by mandamus. In Agustin Ramos vs. Sandoval(1989) where the respondent Judge was
questioned for dismissing therein petitioners mandamus action to compel the Medical Board of
Examiners and the Professional Regulation Commission to re-correct their ratings, the Supreme
Court held that (t)he function of reviewing and re-assessing the petitioners answers to the
examination questions, in the light of the facts and arguments presented by them is a
discretionary function of the Medical Board, not a ministerial and mandatory one, hence, not
within the scope of thewrit of mandamus. For a writ of mandamus to issue, the applicant must
have a well-defined, clear, and certain legal right to the thing demanded. The corresponding duty
of the respondent to perform the required act must be equally clear. No such clarity exists here.
And despite petitioners assertion that she did not demand re-correction, the most cursory perusal
of her Second Amended Petition and her prayer that respondents make the appropriate revisions
on the results of her examination belied this claim.

3. WON petitioner failed to exhaust the administrative remedies

Like the claimants in Agustin, petitioners remedy from the Boards refusal to release the
Examination Papers should have been through an appeal to the PRC. Under Section 5(c) of
Presidential Decree No. 223, the PRC has the power to review and approve the policies,
resolutions, rules and regulations, orders and decisions of the various professional Boards,
including the results of their licensure examinations, and the decisions of the Boards on
administrative cases shall be final and executory unless appealed to the PRC within 30 days from
promulgation. Contrarys to petitioners claim, this power is not limited to administrative
investigations but encompasses requests for documents. And since the PRC itself issued the
resolution (PRC Resolution No. 338) questioned by petitioner, it was in the best position to
resolve questions addressed to its area of expertise. One of the reasons for exhaustion of
administrative remedies is the well-entrenched doctrine of separation of powers, which enjoins
upon the Judiciary a becoming policy of non-interference with matters falling primarily (albeit
not exclusively) within the competence of other departments. However, the principle of
exhaustion of administrative remedies is subject to exceptions, among which is when only a
question of law is involved. Whether or not petitioner had a constitutional right to demand access
to the Examination Papers was one such question of law which cannot be resolved with finality
by the administrative officer.
 4. WON the case was mooted by petitioners passing the May 1998 CPA Licensure
Examination;

An issue becomes moot and academic when it ceases to present a justiciable controversy,
so that a declaration on the issue would be of no practical use or value. In this jurisdiction, any
citizen may challenge any attempt to obstruct the exercise of his or her right to information and
may seek its enforcement by mandamus. And since every citizen possesses the inherent right to
be informed by the mere fact of citizenship, petitioners belated passing of the CPA Board Exams
did not automatically mean that her interest in the Examination Papers had become mere
superfluity. Undoubtedly, the constitutional question presented, in view of the likelihood that the
issues in this case would be repeated, warranted review.
X. RIGHT OF ASSOCIATION

GRISWOLD VS. CONNECTICUT (1965)

Facts:

Appellant Griswold, Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of

Connecticut and Appellant Buxton, a licensed physician who served as Medical Director for the
League at its Center in New Haven, were arrested and charged with giving information,
instruction, and medical advice to married persons on means of preventing conception.
Appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each. Appellants appealed on the
theory that the accessory statute as applied violated the 14th Amendment to the United States
Constitution. Appellants claimed standing based on their professional relationship with the
married people they advised.

Issue:

WON the Constitution protects the right of marital privacy against state restrictions on a
couples ability to be counseled in the use of contraceptives?

RULING:

YES. Several fundamental rights are constitutionally protected even though they are NOT
EXPRESSLY PROVIDED IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS (US). These rights emanate from the
penumbra (gray area) of the specific guarantees of the bill of rights. In simpler terms, they are
considered as implied and peripheral rights and without which, the specific rights would be
less secured.

Although general right of privacy (in this case, the right to marital privacy) is not
explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, various guarantees in the Bill of Rights create zones of
privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one
of them.

The association of people is not mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights.
The right to educate a child in a school of the parents' choice -- whether public or private or
parochial -- is also not mentioned. Nor is the right to study any particular subject or any foreign
language. Yet the First Amendment has been construed to include certain of those rights.
The right to educate one's children as one chooses is made applicable to the States by the force of
the First and Fourteenth Amendments; the same dignity is given the right to study the German
language in a private school.

In other words, the State may not, consistently with the spirit of the First Amendment,
contract the spectrum of available knowledge. The right of freedom of speech and press includes
not only the right to utter or to print, but the right to distribute, the right to receive, the right to
read, and freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach -- indeed, the freedom
of the entire university community.

As mentioned, without those peripheral rights, the specific rights would be less secure.
We protected the "freedom to associate and privacy in one's associations," noting in one
case that freedom of association was a peripheral First Amendment right. Disclosure of
membership lists of a constitutionally valid association, as we held in a past decision, was invalid
as it entails the likelihood of a substantial restraint upon the exercise by petitioner's members of
their right to freedom of association."

In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected
from governmental intrusion. In like context, we have protected forms of "association" that are
not political in the customary sense, but pertain to the social, legal, and economic benefit of the
members. The right of "association," like the right of belief, is more than the right to attend a
meeting; it includes the right to express one's attitudes or philosophies by membership in a group
or by affiliation with it or by other lawful means. Association in that context is a form of
expression of opinion, and, while it is not expressly included in the First Amendment, its
existence is necessary in making the express guarantees fully meaningful.

The present case, then, concerns a relationship (marital) lying within the zone of privacy
created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees. At the same time, it concerns a law
which, in forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than regulating their manufacture or sale,
seeks to achieve its goals by means of having a maximum destructive impact upon that
relationship. Such a law cannot stand in light of the familiar principle, so often applied by this
Court, that a "governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to
state regulation may not be achieved by some means which thereby invade the area of protected
freedoms."

Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale
signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy
surrounding the marriage relationship.

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights -- older than our political
parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse,
hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes
a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not
commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in
our prior decisions.
Additional info:

Specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights that have penumbras/creates zones of privacy

(Aside from the First Amendment-Right of association)

Third Amendment

Its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers in any house in time of peace without
the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy.

Fourth Amendment

Explicitly affirms the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Creates a penumbra that protects privacy interests.

Fifth Amendment

Prohibits self-incrimination and enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which
government may not force him to surrender to his detriment.

Ninth Amendment

Provides that the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.