CASE DIGEST: Magallona v. Ermita

 Magallona v. Ermita, G.R. No. 187167, August 16, 2011

FACTS:

In 1961, Congress passed RA 3046 demarcating the maritime baselines of the Philippines as an archipelagic State. This law followed the framing of UNCLOS I, codifying, among others, the sovereign right of States parties over their "territorial sea," the breadth of which, however, was left undetermined.

In March 2009, Congress amended RA 3046 by enacting RA 9522. The change was prompted by the need to make RA 3046 compliant with the terms of UNCLOS III. Among others, UNCLOS III prescribes the water-land ratio, length, and contour of baselines of archipelagic States like the Philippines and sets the deadline for the filing of application for the extended continental shelf. Complying with these requirements, RA 9522 shortened one baseline, optimized the location of some basepoints around the Philippine archipelago and classified adjacent territories, namely, the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) and the Scarborough Shoal, as "regimes of islands" whose islands generate their own applicable maritime zones.

Petitioners, professors of law, law students and a legislator, in their respective capacities as "citizens, taxpayers or x x x legislators" assail the constitutionality of RA 9522 on two principal grounds, namely: (1) RA 9522 reduces Philippine maritime territory, and logically, the reach of the Philippine state's sovereign power, in violation of Article 1 of the 1987 Constitution, embodying the terms of the Treaty of Paris and ancillary treaties, and (2) RA 9522 opens the country's waters landward of the baselines to maritime passage by all vessels and aircrafts, undermining Philippine sovereignty and national security, contravening the country's nuclear-free policy, and damaging marine resources, in violation of relevant constitutional provisions.

Petitioners submit that RA 9522 "dismembers a large portion of the national territory" because it discards the pre-UNCLOS III demarcation of Philippine territory under the Treaty of Paris and related treaties, successively encoded in the definition of national territory under the 1935, 1973 and 1987 Constitutions. Petitioners theorize that this constitutional definition trumps any treaty or statutory provision denying the Philippines sovereign control over waters, beyond the territorial sea recognized at the time of the Treaty of Paris, that Spain supposedly ceded to the United States. Petitioners argue that from the Treaty of Paris' technical description, Philippine sovereignty over territorial waters extends hundreds of nautical miles around the Philippine archipelago, embracing the rectangular area delineated in the Treaty of Paris.

ISSUE:

W/N RA 9522 is unconstitutional

RULING:

UNCLOS III has nothing to do with the acquisition (or loss) of territory. It is a multilateral treaty regulating, among others, sea-use rights over maritime zones (i.e., the territorial waters 12 nautical miles from the baselines], contiguous zone [24 nautical miles from the baselines], exclusive economic zone [200 nautical miles from the baselines]), and continental shelves that UNCLOS III delimits. UNCLOS III was the culmination of decades-long negotiations among United Nations members to codify norms regulating the conduct of States in the world's oceans and submarine areas, recognizing coastal and archipelagic States' graduated authority over a limited span of waters and submarine lands along their coasts.

On the other hand, baselines laws such as RA 9522 are enacted by UNCLOS III States parties to mark-out specific basepoints along their coasts from which baselines are drawn, either straight or contoured, to serve as geographic starting points to measure the breadth of the maritime zones and continental shelf.

Baselines laws are nothing but statutory mechanisms for UNCLOS III States parties to delimit with precision the extent of their maritime zones and continental shelves. In turn, this gives notice to the rest of the international community of the scope of the maritime space and submarine areas within which States parties exercise treaty-based rights, namely, the exercise of sovereignty over territorial waters (Article 2), the jurisdiction to enforce customs, fiscal, immigration, and sanitation laws in the contiguous zone (Article 33), and the right to exploit the living and non-living resources in the exclusive economic zone (Article 56) and continental shelf (Article 77).

Even under petitioners' theory that the Philippine territory embraces the islands and all the waters within the rectangular area delimited in the Treaty of Paris, the baselines of the Philippines would still have to be drawn in accordance with RA 9522 because this is the only way to draw the baselines in conformity with UNCLOS III. The baselines cannot be drawn from the boundaries or other portions of the rectangular area delineated in the Treaty of Paris, but from the "outermost islands and drying reefs of the archipelago."

UNCLOS III and its ancillary baselines laws play no role in the acquisition, enlargement or, as petitioners claim, diminution of territory. Under traditional international law typology, States acquire (or conversely, lose) territory through occupation, accretion, cession and prescription, not by executing multilateral treaties on the regulations of sea-use rights or enacting statutes to comply with the treaty's terms to delimit maritime zones and continental shelves. Territorial claims to land features are outside UNCLOS III, and are instead governed by the rules on general international law.