Legislative Journal and Congressional Record

The enrolled bill doctrine

Mabanag v Lopez Vito

FACTS:

Three of the plaintiff senators and eight of the plaintiff representatives had been
proclaimed by a majority vote of the Commission on Elections as having been elected
senators and representatives in the elections held on April 23, 1946. The three
senators were suspended by the Senate shortly after the opening of the first session of
Congress following the elections, on account of alleged irregularities in their election.
The eight representatives since their election had not been allowed to sit in the lower
House, except to take part in the election of the Speaker, for the same reason,
although they had not been formally suspended. A resolution for their suspension had
been introduced in the House of Representatives, but that resolution had not been
acted upon definitely by the House when the present petition was filed.

As a consequence these three senators and eight representatives did not take part in
the passage of the questioned Congressional resolution ("Resolution of both houses
proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the Philippines to be appended as an
ordinance thereto.") nor was their membership reckoned within the computation of
the necessary three-fourths vote which is required in proposing an amendment to the
Constitution. If these members of Congress had been counted, the affirmative votes in
favor of the proposed amendment would have been short of the necessary three-
fourths vote in either branch of Congress.

ISSUE:

1. Whether a duly authenticated bill or resolution imports absolute verity and is
binding on the courts.

HELD:

1. Yes. It will be seen upon examination of section 313 of the Code of Civil Procedure,
as amended byAct No. 2210, that, roughly, it provides two methods of proving
legislative proceedings: (1) by the journals, or by published statutes or resolutions, or
by copies certified by the clerk or secretary or printed by their order; and (2) in case of
acts of the Legislature, by a copy signed by the presiding officers and secretaries
thereof, which shall be conclusive proof of the provisions of such Acts and of the due
enactment thereof.

This Court found in the journals no signs of irregularity in the passage of the law and
did not bother itself with considering the effects of an authenticated copy if one had
been introduced. It did not do what the opponents of the rule of conclusiveness
advocate, namely, look into the journals behind the enrolled copy in order to
determine the correctness of the latter, and rule such copy out if the two, the journals
and the copy, be found in conflict with each other. No discrepancy appears to have
been noted between the two documents. There is an explicit provision that duly
certified copies "shall be conclusive proof of the provisions of such Acts and of the due
enactment thereof."
Note:
a) Enrolled bill theory The enrolled bill is conclusive upon the courts as regards the
tenor of the measure passed by Congress and approved by the President. If a mistake
as in fact made in the printing of the bill before it was certified by the officers of the
Congress and approved by the Chief Executive, the remedy is amendment or corrective
legislation, not by judicial decree.

b) Some of these reasons in favor of the enrolled bill is summarized in 50
AmericanJurisprudence, section 150 as follows:
SEC. 150. Reasons for Conclusiveness. It has been declared that the rule against
going behind the enrolled bill is required by the respect due to a coequal and
independent department of the government, and it would be an inquisition into the
conduct of the members of the legislature, a very delicate power, the frequent exercise
of which must lead to endless confusion in the administration of the law. The rule is
also one of convenience, because courts could not rely on the published session laws,
but would be required to look beyond these to the journals of the legislature and often
to any printed bills and amendments which might be found after the adjournment of
the legislature. Otherwise, after relying on the prima facie evidence of the enrolled
bills, authenticated as exacted by the Constitution, for years, it might be ascertained
from the journals that an act theretofore enforced had never become a law. In this
respect, it has been declared that these is quite enough uncertainty as to what the law
is without saying that no one may be certain that an act of the legislature has become
such until the issue has been determined by some court whose decision might not be
regarded as conclusive in an action between the parties.

c) The Court deemed it unnecessary to decide the question of whether the senators
and representatives who were ignored in the computation of the necessary three-
fourths vote were members of Congress within the meaning of section 1 of Article XV
of the Philippine Constitution.