AGUSTIN vs EDU
Facts:
The
letter of instruction providing for an early warning device for motor vehicles
is being assailed in the case at bar as being violative of the constitutional
guarantee of due process. Petitioner contends that they are "infected with
arbitrariness because it is harsh, cruel and unconscionable to the motoring
public;" 13 are "one‐sided, onerous
and patently illegal and immoral because [they] will make manufacturers and
dealers instant millionaires at the expense of car owners who are compelled to
buy a set of the so‐called early
warning device at the rate of P 56.00 to P72.00 per set." 14 are unlawful and unconstitutional
and contrary to the precepts of a compassionate New Society [as being]
compulsory and confiscatory on the part of the motorists who could very well
provide a practical alternative road safety device, or a better substitute to
the specified set of EWD's."
Held:
Petitioner’s
contention is erroneous because the Letter of Instruction was issued in the
exercise of the police power which is “nothing more or less than the powers of
government inherent in every sovereignty.” In the leading case of Calalang v. Williams, Justice Laurel
identified police power with state
authority to enact legislation that may interfere with personal liberty or
property in order to promote the general welfare. Persons and property
could thus ‘be subjected to all kinds of restraints and burdens in order for
the general comfort, health and prosperity of the state.’ This doctrine was
later reiterated again in Primicias v.
Fugoso which referred police power as ‘the
power to prescribe regulations to promote the health, morals, peace, education,
good order or safety, and general welfare of the people.’ The concept
was set forth in negative terms by Justice Malcolm in a pre-Commonwealth
decision as ‘that inherent and
plenary power in the State which enables it to prohibit all things hurtful to
the comfort, safety and welfare of society.’ Its scope, ever-expanding
to meet the exigencies of the times, even to anticipate the future where it
could be done, provides enough room for an efficient and flexible response to
conditions and circumstances thus assuring the greatest benefits. In the
language of Justice Cardozo: ‘Needs that were narrow or parochial in the past
may be interwoven in the present with the well-being of the nation. What are
critical or urgent changes with the time.’ The police power is thus a dynamic
agency, suitably vague and far from precisely defined, rooted in the conception
that men in organizing the state and imposing upon its government limitations
to safeguard constitutional rights did not intend thereby to enable an individual
citizen or a group of citizens to obstruct unreasonably the enactment of such
salutary measures calculated to communal peace, safety, good order, and
welfare.”