A SOVEREIGN STATE reclaiming part of the sea in so called
reclamation projects).
State is a group of people, more or less
numerous, capable of procreation and of self-
defense, living on a definite territory (which
must be on land, and not the sea), possessed
of a government to which the inhabitants
render habitual obedience, and such
independence from external control as would
enable it to conduct its external and internal
affairs without unreasonable intervention from
other groups.
Elements or Attributes of a State (PSGT)
1. People – They are human beings, male
or female, who live together for a common
end, notwithstanding differences in race, color,
religion, or culture. (Pirates, even if banded
together, are in danger of incessant attempts at
extermination because they are international
outlaws; hence their society cannot be deemed a
State, in any sense of the term.)
2. Sovereignty/Independence – supreme
power or authority. It is a freedom from
external control in the conduct of one’s
external and internal affairs.
3. Government – It is the framework of
political institutions, departments, and offices,
by means of which the executive, judicial,
legislative and administrative business of the
State is carried on.
4. Definite Territory – The territory may be
large or small: this is of no consequence; what
is vital is that it be fixed or delimited. The
territory must be land (with the sea) but
certainly not on the sea alone.
Fundamental Rights of State (SPEED)
A. Right of Existence, Integrity and Self-
Preservation (Self Defense)
Modes of acquiring territories:
1. Discovery and Occupation - Only terra
nullius or stateless territory could be acquired
by discovery and occupation.
2. Prescription – Two important elements:
Continuous, public and adverse possession
plus lapse of a reasonable period of time.
3. Cession – effected either voluntarily or
involuntarily.
4. Accretion – is a process of attaching or
incorporating something to what an owner of
territory already has: the process maybe
natural one (cause by natural forces as the
current of river or the action of the sea) or an
artificial one (such as by the act of the State in
** Right to self-defense is expressly
recognized by the UN Charter. Article 51
thereof provides that “Nothing in the present
Charter shall impair the inherent right of
Individual or Collective self-defense if any
armed attack occurs against a member of the
United Nations, until the Security Council has
taken the measures necessary for the
maintenance of international peace and
security.
Note: The presence of an armed attack to
justify the exercise of the right of self-defense
under this article suggest that forcible
measures may be taken by a state only in the
face of necessity of self-defense instant,
overwhelming and leaving no choice of means
and no moment for deliberation (grave
imminent danger or actual danger).
Article II Section 2 of the Constitution provides
that the Philippines renounces war as an
instrument of national policy. This provision
called “war renunciation clause”.
A national policy renouncing war as a threat to
national security. This declaration refers to the
Briand-Kellog Anti-War Pact or the Pact of
Paris signed on August 27, 1928 by fifty-six
countries, which bound the signatory countries
to follow a policy of peaceful international
relationship and to consider wars of
aggression illegal (Declaring of War) It is also
in accordance with the principle in the United
Nations Charter binding all members to refrain
in their international relations from the threat or
use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of any state.
When in times of national crisis arising from
outside force of war, the Congress with the
concurrence of two-thirds of all its members,
voting separately, may declare the existence
of a state. (Declaring the existence of war)
B. Right of Sovereignty and Independence
Sovereignty is the supreme power inherent in
a state to absolutely control a definite territory.
Independence, on the other hand, is a
freedom from external control in the conduct of
external and internal affairs.
Two aspects:
1. Internal sovereignty – refers to the power
of the state to direct its domestic affairs.
2. External sovereignty – signifies the
freedom of the state to control its own foreign
affairs. It is referred to as independence
Essential attributes of Sovereignty are
(PEICU):
1. Perpetuity or permanence – so long as
the State continues to exist;
2. Exclusiveness or impenetrability-
generally all persons sojourning in the state
are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the
said State.
3. Inalienability – State ceases to be
sovereign from the moment it alienate such
sovereignty.
4. Unity – authority is indivisible: try to divide
authority and the result will be inevitable
chaos.
5. Comprehensiveness – sovereignty deals
with all persons and all property within the
territory.
Note: The State’s sovereignty and
independence cannot be considered absolute,
certain restrictions enter into the picture:
1. Limitations imposed by the international
scheme of things; and
2. Limitation imposed by treaty stipulations
(see: principle of auto-limitation, Tanada vs
Angara May 2, 1997)
Note: Independence cannot be regarded as
importing absolute freedom. Like the liberty of
individual who must submit to limitations, it is
also subject to limitations. A state may not
employ force or even the threat of force in its
relations with the other states because this is
prohibited by Article 2 of the Charter of the
United Nations. It may not refuse to observe
treaties in good faith in accordance with the
maxim pacta sunt servanda. The principle of
mare liberum will prevent it from arrogating to
itself the exclusive use of the open seas to the
detriment of other states.
Intervention – an act by which a state
interferes with the domestic or foreign affairs
of another state through the employment of
force or threat of force. Instances when the
use of force or intervention is allowed under
the Charter of the United Nation:
1. When it is exercised as an act of self-
defense;
2. When it is decreed by the Security
Council as a preventive or enforcement action
for the maintenance of international peace and
security;
3. When such action is agreed upon in a
treaty;
4. Payment of contractual obligations;
5. Protection of the rights of aliens; and
6. Other grounds such as justice, humanity,
religion, national prestige, legitimacy,
economic interest, and balance of power.
Note:
Drago doctrine – the collection of public and
private debts cannot give rise to intervention,
and much less to the occupation of the soil
and armed intervention for the purpose of
collecting contractual debts cannot be allowed
except: 1. If there is a refusal or a neglect to
reply to an officer of arbitration; or 2. If after
accepting the offer at an arbitration, the
debtor-State prevents any compromise from
being agreed upon; or 3. If after the arbitral
verdict shall have been decreed, the debtor-
State fails to abide by the award.
** The drago doctrine never had the force of
international law because it was not looked
upon with favor by many States, although of
course, it was adopted, in a qualified sort of
way, by the 1907 Hague Convention.
C. Right of Equality
In Article 2 of the Charter of the United
Nations, it is announced that “The
Organization is based on the principle of the
sovereign equality of all its Members.” The
principle is more fully fleshed out in the
provision of the Montevideo Convention of
1933 that “states are judicially equal, enjoy the
same rights, and have equal capacity in their
exercises. By equality we mean legal equality
not political equality.
Important Consequences of the Legal Equality
of States:
1. Each state has a right to vote – but to one
vote only – in all questions which can be
settled only by consent.
2. The weights of the votes are usually equal
3. The rule of par in parem not habet
imperium – no state can claim jurisdiction over
another.
4. The courts of one State do not, as a rule,
question the validity or legality of the official
acts of another sovereign State, so long as
those rules take effect within the sphere of the
latter’s own jurisdiction.
5. Equality can be retained only if there is
dignity: thus, by virtue of legal equality, a State
has the corollary right to its reputation, good
name and dignity.
Note: The right to equality does not guarantee
the factual equality but only legal equality
because not all States have the same
economic and military forces.
Act of State Doctrine is the doctrine that a
State should not inquire into the legal validity
of the public acts (legislative, executive,
judicial) of another State (or foreign sovereign
powers) done within the territory of the latter.
Act of State doctrine is not a principle of
international law. Failure to apply the doctrine
does not constitute a breach of international
obligation, BUT neither does international law
forbid the application of the rule. Under both
Public International Law and Transnational
Law, a person who feels aggrieved by the acts
of a foreign sovereign can ask his own
government to espouse his cause through
diplomatic channels. Once the State decides
to espouse the claim, the case ceases to be a
private cause (The Holy See vs Hon. Rosario
GR No. 101949 December 01, 1994)
In the case of Holy See vs Hon Rosario, the
SC reiterates the principle non-suability or
state immunity of the State and cannot be
sued without its consent. This principle is
continuously upheld as State can do no wrong.
Voting rights
Article 2, Sec. 1 of the United Nations
Charter provides: “The Organization is based
on the principle of the sovereign equality of all
its members.” This equality, however, has
been impaired by at least two other provisions:
1. The presence of permanent and
temporary members in the Security Council;
and
2. The “veto power” possessed by a
permanent member.
The United Nations Security Council "veto
power" refers to the power of the permanent
members of the UN Security Council (China,
France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United
States) to veto any "substantive" resolution. A
permanent member's abstention or absence
does not prevent a draft resolution from being
adopted. This veto power does not apply to
"procedural" votes, as determined by the
permanent members themselves. A
permanent member can also block
the selection of a Secretary-General, although
a formal veto is unnecessary since the vote is
taken behind closed doors. This is an
indication that the state is more powerful than
other state.
D. Right of property and jurisdiction
To exist, a State must have property, i.e.,
domain; there are three kinds of domain: the
territorial domain, the maritime or fluvial
domain, and the aerial domain.
The National Territory of the Philippines
The national territory comprises the
Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and
waters embraced therein, and all other
territories over which the Philippines has
sovereignty or jurisdiction, consisting of its
terrestrial, fluvial and aerial domains, including
its territorial sea, the sea-bed, the subsoil, the
insular shelves, and other submarine areas.
The waters around, between, and connecting
the islands of the archipelago, regardless of
their breadth and dimensions, form part of the
internal waters of the Philippines (Section 1,
Article 1, 1987 Constitution)
*** In defining the internal waters of the
archipelago, straight base lines should be
drawn to connect appropriate points of the
outermost islands without departing radically
from the general direction of the coast so that
the entire archipelago shall be encompassed
as a whole territory.
Territorial Domain – includes properties of
public dominion as well as properties of private
ownership. Properties of public dominion
include those for public use, those for public
service and those for the development of the
national wealth.
Maritime or Fluvial Domain – consists of rivers,
lakes, bays, gulfs, straits, and canals.
Theoretically, there are two kinds of waters:
The internal or inland waters (these are
completely within the territory)
The external or territorial or maritime waters
(these are those found within the maritime or
territorial zone, along the coastline)
The Subsoil and the Aerial Domain – The
space below a State’s territory belongs to the
State: in principle, this ownership may even
extend to the center of the earth. The
sovereignty over the air space remains with
the subjacent State, it is subject to the
servitude or easement of innocent passage for
foreign civil aircraft.
Right of Jurisdiction consists of:
1. its territorial jurisdiction (which is its
authority over persons and properties within
the territorial boundaries); and
2. its personal jurisdiction (which in this
sense is its authority over its nationals who are
now in foreign territory)
Principle of Exterritoriality – is the fiction in
international law by virtue of which certain
foreign persons and their things are exempted
from the jurisdiction of a State on the theory
that they form an extension of the territory of
their own State.
Archipelagic Doctrine – see Magallona vs
Ermita GR No. 187167 August 16, 2011
RA 9522 or Archipelagic Baseline Law is
nothing but statutory mechanism for UNCLOS
III State parties to delimit with precision the
extent of maritime zone and continental
shelves. In turn, this maritime space and
submarine areas within which State parties
exercise treaty-based rights namely:
1. The exercise of sovereignty over territorial
waters (12 NM from the baseline);
2. The jurisdiction to enforce customs, fiscal,
immigration and sanitation laws in contiguous
zone (24 NM from the baseline); and
3. The right to exploit the living and non-
living resources in the exclusive economic
zone (200 NM from the baseline)

E. The Right of Legation or of Diplomatic

Intercourse
The exercise of the right of legation is one of
the most effective ways of facilitating and
promoting intercourse among states.
Diplomatic relations are normally conducted
through the head of the state, the foreign
secretary or minister and the members of the
diplomatic service.