COLLEGE OF LAWDE LA SALLE UNIVERSITY

AGRARIAN & SOCIAL LEGISLATION1st Semester, SY 2015-2016

Atty. Charisma I. NolascoEmail: charm_upmla@yahoo.com

I. COURSE DESCRIPTION

This subject is divided into two (2) parts. The first part intends to familiarize the students with the basic concepts and legal foundations in the implementation of agrarian reform in the Philippines. The second part of the course will be a quick overview of laws promoting public welfare with relevance to labor, and jurisprudence applying and construing the same.

II. PREREQUISITE COURSE

None

III. COURSE MATERIALS

A. Required Course/Reference Materials

1987 Philippine ConstitutionR.A. No. 6657 (as amended by R.A. Nos. 7881, 7905, 8532 & 9700)P.D. No. 27 (as amended by E.O. No. 228)R.A. No. 3844 (as amended by P.D. Nos. 251, 444, 1039 & 1817, R.A. Nos. 6389, 6557, 7907 & 9700)R.A. No. 8282 (Social Security Act of 1997)R.A. No. 8291 (Government Service Insurance System Act of 1997)R.A. No 7875 (as amended by R.A. Nos. 9241 & 10606)

B. Recommended Textbook

Ungos, Jr. & Ungos III. AGRARIAN LAW AND SOCIAL LEGISLATION (2013)

IV. COURSE OBJECTIVES

At the end of the course, the students will be able to comprehend the laws and relevant jurisprudence interpreting and applying Philippine agrarian and social legislations.

V. COURSE REQUIREMENTS

A. Class Preparation

Students must read the assigned materials. Class recitations will be regularly conducted using the Socratic method to enable them to understand the rationale of the law and thereafter resolve fact situations by applying the relevant laws and legal principles. The class shall observe a “closed notes” policy.

B. Attendance

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Regular and punctual attendance is required. The policy observed by the College will be adopted in considering a student as automatically dropped due to absences. Attendance will be checked before the start of the class.

C. Grading Criteria and Evaluation

The students shall be graded as follows:

Attendance 10%Recitation/Quizzes 20%Midterm Examinations 30%Final Examinations 40%Total 100%

Both the midterm and final examinations will be in written form and will consist of both objective and essay questions. The honor code will be adopted.

The assigned grades are final and shall not be changed/altered except for mathematical/clerical errors.

VI. COURSE ASSIGNMENTS

The attached Course Outline provides in detail the covered topics for each meeting, including additional reading materials. The enumerated reference materials may be subject to change, most especially in cases of landmark decisions of the Supreme Court, as well as recent laws, rules and regulations and other issuances promulgated by the legislative or the executive branches.

Atty. C.I. Nolasco

AGRARIAN & SOCIAL LEGISLATION 1st Semester, SY 2015-2016

Sat. (7-9 p.m.)

I. GENERAL CONCEPTS

A. Sourcesi. Sections 9, 10, 11 & 21, Article II, 1987 Constitution

SECTION 9. The State shall promote a just and dynamic social order that will ensure the prosperity and independence of the nation and free the people from poverty through policies that provide adequate social services, promote full employment, a rising standard of living, and an improved quality of life for all.

SECTION 10. The State shall promote social justice in all phases of national development.

SECTION 11. The State values the dignity of every human person and guarantees full respect for human rights.

SECTION 21. The State shall promote comprehensive rural development and agrarian reform.

ii. Sections 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11 & 12, Article XIII, 1987 Constitution

Social Justice and Human Rights

SECTION 1. The Congress shall give highest priority to the enactment of measures that protect and enhance the right of all the people to human dignity, reduce social, economic, and political inequalities, and remove cultural inequities by equitably diffusing wealth and political power for the common good.

To this end, the State shall regulate the acquisition, ownership, use, and disposition of property and its increments.

SECTION 2. The promotion of social justice shall include the commitment to create economic opportunities based on freedom of initiative and self-reliance.

Agrarian and Natural Resources Reform

SECTION 4. The State shall, by law, undertake an agrarian reform program founded on the right of farmers and regular farmworkers, who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till or, in the case of other farmworkers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof. To this end, the State shall encourage and undertake the just distribution of all agricultural lands, subject to such priorities and reasonable retention limits as the Congress may prescribe, taking into account ecological, developmental, or equity considerations, and subject to the payment of just compensation. In determining retention limits, the State shall respect the right of small landowners. The State shall further provide incentives for voluntary land-sharing.

SECTION 6. The State shall apply the principles of agrarian reform or stewardship, whenever applicable in accordance with law, in the disposition or utilization of other natural resources, including lands of the public domain under lease or concession suitable to agriculture, subject to prior rights, homestead

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rights of small settlers, and the rights of indigenous communities to their ancestral lands.

The State may resettle landless farmers and farmworkers in its own agricultural estates which shall be distributed to them in the manner provided by law.

SECTION 7. The State shall protect the rights of subsistence fishermen, especially of local communities, to the preferential use of local marine and fishing resources, both inland and offshore. It shall provide support to such fishermen through appropriate technology and research, adequate financial, production, and marketing assistance, and other services. The State shall also protect, develop, and conserve such resources. The protection shall extend to offshore fishing grounds of subsistence fishermen against foreign intrusion. Fishworkers shall receive a just share from their labor in the utilization of marine and fishing resources.

SECTION 8. The State shall provide incentives to landowners to invest the proceeds of the agrarian reform program to promote industrialization, employment creation, and privatization of public sector enterprises. Financial instruments used as payment for their lands shall be honored as equity in enterprises of their choice.

Health

SECTION 11. The State shall adopt an integrated and comprehensive approach to health development which shall endeavor to make essential goods, health and other social services available to all the people at affordable cost. There shall be priority for the needs of the underprivileged sick, elderly, disabled, women, and children. The State shall endeavor to provide free medical care to paupers.

SECTION 12. The State shall establish and maintain an effective food and drug regulatory system and undertake appropriate health manpower development and research, responsive to the country’s health needs and problems.

iii. Social Justice

Read: Calalang v. Williams, G.R. No. 47800, December 2, 1940Social justice is "neither communism, nor despotism, nor atomism, nor anarchy," but the humanization of laws and the equalization of social and economic forces by the State so that justice in its rational and objectively secular conception may at least be approximated. Social justice means the promotion of the welfare of all the people, the adoption by the Government of measures calculated to insure economic stability of all the competent elements of society, through the maintenance of a proper economic and social equilibrium in the interrelations of the members of the community, constitutionally, through the adoption of measures legally justifiable, or extra constitutionally, through the exercise of powers underlying the existence of all governments on the timehonored principle of salus populi est suprema lex. Social justice, therefore, must be founded on the recognition of the necessity of interdependence among divers and diverse units of a society and of the protection that should be equally and evenly extended to all groups as a combined force in our social and economic life, consistent with the fundamental and paramount objective of the state of promoting the health, comfort, and quiet of all persons, and of bringing about "the greatest good to the greatest number"

Asso. of Small Landowners v. Sec. of Agrarian Reform,G.R. No. 78742, July 14, 1989

It is only where the owner is unwilling to sell, or cannot accept the price or other conditions offered by the vendee, that the power of eminent domain will come into play to assert the paramount authority of the State over the interests of the property owner. Private rights must then

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yield to the irresistible demands of the public interest on the timehonored justification, as in the case of the police power, that the welfare of the people is the supreme law.

B. Definitioni. Agrarian

Relating to land or to the ownership or division of landii. Agrarian law

Laws regulating the distribution of public agricultural lands, large estates, and regulation of the relationship between landowner and farmer who works on the land. It embraces all laws that govern and regulate the rights and relationship over agricultural lands between landowners, tenants, lessees or agricultural workers

iii. Agrarian reform(a) Agrarian Reform means redistribution of lands, regardless of crops or fruits produced, to

farmers and regular farmworkers who are landless, irrespective of tenurial arrangement, to include the totality of factors and support services designed to lift the economic status of the beneficiaries and all other arrangements alternative to the physical redistribution of lands, such as production or profit-sharing, labor administration, and the distribution of shares of stocks, which will allow beneficiaries to receive a just share of the fruits of the lands they work.

Covers not only distribution of lands but also labor administration, profit sharing, and stock distribution. To confine agrarian reform to land distribution only is not feasible because there is not enough agricultural land that can be distributed to every farmer or regular farmworker.

Agrarian Reform is considered wider than land reform. The term comprises not only land reform (such as the reform of tenure, production and supporting services structures) but also the reform and development of complementary institutional framework such as the administrative agencies of the national government, rural educational and social welfare institutions and not limited simply to the question of the relationships of the farmers to the land.It encompasses all programs designed to bring about improvement in all the institutions surrounding farm life, as well as companion measures necessary to make the work of the tenant, farm worker, and owner cultivator successful.

It means remedying not only the defect in the distribution and use of land but also and especially, the accompanying human relations regarding land, including economic, social and political relations.It is concerned not only with the farmer and the land he tills but also with the community he lives in.

iv. Agricultural land(b) Agricultural Land refers to land devoted to agricultural activity as defined in this Act and not

classified as mineral, forest, residential, commercial or industrial land.Contemplates lands that are arable and suitable for farming

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v. Social Legislationany act passed by the legislature or a decree issued by the government for the removal of certain social evils or for the improvement of social conditions or with the aim of bringing about social reform.

No precise definition, so broad that it covers labor laws, agrarian laws and welfare laws. Emphasis is on the aspect of general public good and social welfare. Essentially, the laws or statutes enacted pursuant to the social justice clause of the Constitution.

C. History of agrarian reform laws

Read: Ungos & Ungos, AGRARIAN LAW & SOCIAL LEGISLATION, pp. 1-6Secs., 3 (a) & (c), R.A. No. 6657 (As amended)Holy Trinity Realty & Dev’t. Corp. v. dela Cruz, G.R. No. 200454,

October 22, 2014

II. AGRARIAN REFORM

A. Definitioni. Agricultural activity

ii. Agrarian disputeiii. Idle/Abandoned Landiv. Farmerv. Farmworker

a. Regularb. Seasonalc. Others

Read: Sec. 3, R.A. 6657, as amendedDAR v. Sutton, G.R. No. 162070, October 19, 2005

We find that the impugned A.O. is invalid as it contravenes the Constitution. The A.O. sought to regulate livestock farms by including them in the coverage of agrarian reform and prescribing a maximum retention limit for their ownership. However, the deliberations of the 1987 Constitutional Commission show a clear intent to exclude, inter alia, all lands exclusively devoted to livestock, swine and poultry-raising. The Court clarified in the Luz Farms case that livestock, swine and poultryraising are industrial activities and do not fall within the definition of “agriculture” or “agricultural activity.” The raising of livestock, swine and poultry is different from crop or tree farming. It is an industrial, not an agricultural, activity.

The subsequent case of Natalia Realty, Inc. v. DAR reiterated our ruling in the Luz Farms case. In Natalia Realty, the Court held that industrial, commercial and residential lands are not covered by the CARL. We stressed anew that while Section 4

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of R.A. No. 6657 provides that the CARL shall cover all public and private agricultural lands, the term “agricultural land” does not include lands classified as mineral, forest, residential, commercial or industrial. Thus, in Natalia Realty, even portions of the Antipolo Hills Subdivision, which are arable yet still undeveloped, could not be considered as agricultural lands subject to agrarian reform as these lots were already classified as residential lands.

Milestone Farms v. Office of the President, G.R. No. 182332, February 23, 2011

Islanders CARP-Farmers Beneficiaries v. LADECO, G.R. No. 159089, May 3, 2006Del Monte Phils. v. Sangunay, G.R. No. 180013, January 31, 2011People v. Vanzuela, G.R. No. 178266, July 21, 2008Monsanto v. Zerna, G.R. No. 142501, December 7, 2001

B. Scope

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 13-15, 32-38Secs. 4, 9 & 10, R.A. 6657, as amendedP.D. No. 27, as amendedHoly Trinity Realty & Dev’t. Corp. v. dela Cruz, supra

C. Implementation

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 38-43Secs. 5, 7, & 11 R.A. 6657, as amendedSec. 30, R.A. 9700

D. Retention Limits

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 15-24, 157-158Secs. 6, 6-a & 6-b, 70, R.A. 6657, as amendedP.D. No. 27Heirs of Aurelio Reyes v. Garilao, G.R. No. 136466, November 25,

2009Roman Catholic Archbishop of Caceres v. Sec. of Agrarian Reform,

G.R. No. 139285, December 21, 2007DAR v. Sutton, supraDanan v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 132759, October 25, 2005

E. Tenurial arrangements and relations

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra pp. 43-45, 88-89, 145, 160-176Secs. 12, 13, 32, R.A. 6657, as amendedSecs. 4-21, 23-38, R.A. No. 3844Galope v. Bugarin, G.R. No. 185669, February 1, 2012Tarona v. CA, G.R. No. 170182, June 18, 2009Reyes v. Reyes, G.R. No. 140164, September 6, 2002Verde v. Macapagal, G.R. No. 151342, March 4, 2008Rupa v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 80129, January 25, 2000Valencia v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 122363, April 29, 2003

F. Land distributioni. Registration

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Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 45-46Secs. 15-16, R.A. No. 6657, as amended

ii. Land acquisition

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 46-50, 61Sec. 16, 20, R.A. 6657, as amended

iii. Just compensationa) Valuationb) Modes of compensation

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 50-60Secs. 17-29, R.A. 6657, as amendedAsso. of Small Landowners v. Sec. of Agrarian Reform, supraHeirs of Tantoco v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 149621, May 5, 2006Landbank v. Obias, G.R. No. 184406, March 14, 2012

iv. Distributiona) Beneficiaries

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 63-65Sec. 22, R.A. 6657, as amended

b) Order of priority

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, p. 66Sec. 22-A, R.A. 6657, as amended

c) Award ceiling

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 66-68, 71-74Secs. 23, 25 R.A. 6657, as amended

d) Payment

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 61-62, 75-76, 90-91Secs. 21, 26, 33, 34, R.A. 6657, as amended

e) Corporate Landownership

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 79-88 Secs. 29-31, R.A. 6657, as amendedHacienda Luisita v. PARC, G.R. No. 171101, July 2011

f) Special areas of concern

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 100-102 Sec. 40, R.A. 6657, as amended

v. Ownership/Transfera) Title/Tenurial instrument

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 68-71, Sec. 24, R.A. 6657, as amended

b) Rights and limitations

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 76-78 Secs. 27, 28, 66-67, R.A. 6657, as amended

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P.D. No. 27

c) Conversion

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 133-139Secs. 65, 65-A, R.A. 6657, as amended

d) Bank mortgage

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 143-145 Sec. 71, R.A. 6657, as amended

G. Institutional mechanisms

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 102-110Secs. 41-49, R.A. 6657, as amended

H. Jurisdiction & Remedies

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 110-130 Secs. 50-62, 68, R.A. 6657, as amended

I. Prohibited Acts/Omissions

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 145-150Secs. 73-74 R.A. 6657, as amendedP.D. No. 27Secs. 27, 31, R.A. No. 3844

III. SOCIAL LEGISLATION

A. Social Security Act of 1997 (R.A. No. 8282)a. Definitions (Sec. 8)

i. Dependentsii. Employment

iii. Beneficiariesiv. Contingency

b. Compulsory & Voluntary members (Sec. 9)c. Coverage (Secs. 10-11-A)d. Benefits (Secs. 12-14A)

i. Retirementii. Maternity

iii. Permanent disabilitye. Failure to remit (Sec. 22)f. Nature of fundg. Jurisdiction and Remedies (Secs. 4 &5)

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 348-368SSS v. Azote, G.R. No. 209741, April 15, 2015Dy Caico v. SSS, G.R. No. 161357, November 30, 2009Ortega v. Social Security Commission, 555 SCRA 353SSC v. Rizal Poultry and Livestock Corp., G.R. No. 167050, June 1,

2011h. Accident, work-related

Read: Hinoguin v. ECC, G.R. No. 8430, April 17, 1989

i. Proximate Cause

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j. Act of Ministration

Read: Visayan Stevedore Transport Company v. Workmen’s Compensation Commission, G.R. No. L-11875, December 28, 1973

k. Coming and Going rule

Read: Alano v. ECC, G.R. No. L-48594, March 16, 1988Lazo v. ECC, G.R. No. 78617, June 18, 1990

l. Official Functionsm. 24-Hour Duty

Read: GSIS v. Alegre, G.R. No. 128524, April 20, 1999Valeriano v. ECC, G.R. No. 136200, June 8, 2000

n. Compensability (illness)a. Proofb. Work-connected illnessc. Cause of illness is unknown; Increased Risk Doctrine

Read: GSIS v. Capacite, G.R. No. 199780, September 24, 2014GSIS v. Calumpiano, G.R. No. 196102, November 26, 2014

B. National Health Insurance Act of 1995 (as amended by R.A. No. 9241; R.A. No. 10606)1. Principles (Sec. 2)

a. Equityb. Responsivenessc. Social Solidarityd. Fiduciary Responsibilitye. Informed Choicef. Compulsory Coverageg. Cost-sharing

2. Definition (Sec.4)a. Beneficiaryb. Capitationc. Contributiond. Dependente. Health Care Provider

3. Coverage (sec. 6, as amended)4. Change of Residence (sec. 9)5. Exclusion and Benefits (Secs. 11 and 12)6. Quasi-judicial powers (sec. 17)7. Grievance and Appeal (secs. 39-43; secs. 98-136, IRR of R.A. No. 7875, as amended)

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 335-347

C. Government Service Insurance System Act of 1997 (P.D. 1146, as amended by R.A. 8291)

a. Definitions (Sec. 2)i. Member

ii. Dependentiii. Primary and Secondary beneficiaries

b. Membership (Secs. 3 & 4)c. Benefits (Secs. 9-27)

i. Rehabilitation servicesii. Temporary Total Disability

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iii. Permanent Total Disabilityiv. Permanent Partial Disabilityv. Death/Funeral Benefits

vi. Life Insurance

d. Claims and Disputes (Secs. 28-32)

Read: Ungos & Ungos, supra, pp. 369-381

D. Portability (R.A. No. 7699)

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