Ynot vs.

Intermediate Appellate Court, 148 SCRA 659 , March 20, 1987

Under EO 626-A, the President prohibited interprovincial movement of carabaos and the
slaughtering of carabaos not complying with the age requirements. Said law further provides that
no carabeef shall be transported from one province to another, and the any carabao or carabeef
transported shall be subject to confiscation and forfeiture of government, to be distributed to the
charitable organizations which the NMIC Chair may see fit.

Ynot was charged for violation of said law, after having transported 6 carabaos in a pump boat
from Masbate to Iloilo. He filed for recovery of said carabao, but the trial court sustained the
confiscation.

The thrust of his petition is that the executive order is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes
outright confiscation of the carabao or carabeef being transported across provincial boundaries.
His claim is that the penalty is invalid because it is imposed without according the owner a right to
be heard before a competent and impartial court as guaranteed by due process. He complains that
the measure should not have been presumed, and so sustained, as constitutional.

ISSUE: Is the law valid? Was due process observed in its enactment? Was there proper exercise of
police powers?
SC: NO.

The due process clause was kept intentionally vague so it would remain also conveniently resilient.
This was felt necessary because due process is not, like some provisions of the fundamental law, an
"iron rule" laying down an implacable and immutable command for all seasons and all persons.
Flexibility must be the best virtue of the guaranty. The very elasticity of the due process clause was
meant to make it adapt easily to every situation, enlarging or constricting its protection as the
changing times and circumstances may require. Instead, they have preferred to leave the import of the
protection openended, as it were, to be "gradually ascertained by the process Of inclusion and
exclusion in the course of the decision of cases as they arise."

The minimum requirements of due process are notice and hearing which, generally speaking, may not
be dispensed with because they are intended as a safeguard against official arbitrariness. It is a
gratifying commentary on our judicial system that the jurisprudence of this country is rich with
applications of this guaranty as proof of our fealty to the rule of law and the ancient rudiments of fair
play.

The protection of the general welfare is the particular function of the police power which both
restraints and is restrained by due process. The police power is simply defined as the power inherent in
the State to regulate liberty and property for the promotion of the general welfare.18 By reason of its

function, it extends to all the great public needs and is described as the most pervasive, the least
limitable and the most demanding of the three inherent powers of the State, far outpacing taxation
and eminent domain. The individual, as a member of society, is hemmed in by the police power, which
affects him even before he is born and follows him still after he is dead-from the womb to beyond the
tomb-in practically everything he does or owns. Its reach is virtually limitless. It is a ubiquitous and
often unwelcome intrusion. Even so, as long as the activity or the property has some relevance to the
public welfare, its regulation under the police power is not only proper but necessary. And the
justification is found in the venerable Latin maxims, SALUS POPULI EST SUPREMA LEX AND SIC UTERE
TUO UT ALIENUM NON LAEDAS, which call for the subordination of individual interests to the benefit of
the greater number.

It is this power that is now invoked by the government to justify Executive Order No. 626-A, amending
the basic rule in Executive Order No. 626, prohibiting the slaughter of carabaos except under certain
conditions. The original measure was issued for the reason, as expressed In one of its Whereases, that
"present conditions demand that the carabaos and the buffaloes be conserved for the benefit of the
small farmers who rely on them for energy needs." We affirm at the outset the need for such a
measure.

But while conceding that the amendatory measure has the same lawful subject as the original
executive order, we cannot say with equal certainty that it complies with the second requirement, viz.,
that there be a lawful method. We note that to strengthen the original measure, Executive Order No.
626-A imposes an absolute ban not on the slaughter of the carabaos but on their movement, providing
that "no carabao, regardless of age, sex, physical condition or purpose (sic) and no carabeef shall be
transported from one province to another." The object of the prohibition escapes us. The reasonable
connection between the means employed and the purpose sought to be achieved by the questioned
measure is missing.

We do not see how the prohibition of the interprovincial transport of carabaos can prevent their
indiscriminate slaughter, considering that they can be killed anywhere, with no less difficulty in one
province than in another. Obviously, retaining the carabaos in one province will not prevent their
slaughter there, any more than moving them to another province will make it easier to kill them them
As for the carabeef, the prohibition is made to apply to it as otherwise, so says executive order, it could
be easily circumvented by simply killing the animal. Perhaps so. However, if the movement of the live
animal for the purpose of preventing their slaughter cannot be prohibited, it should follow that there is
no reason either to prohibit their transfer as, not to be flippant, dead meat.

Even if a reasonable relation between the means and the end were to be assumed, we would still have
to reckon with the sanction that the measure applies for violation of the prohibition. The penalty is
outright confiscation of the carabao or carabeef being transported, to be meted out by the executive
authorities, usually the police only. In the Toribio Case, the statute was sustained because the penalty
prescribed was fine and imprisonment, to be imposed by the court after trial and conviction of the
accused. Under the challenged measure, significantly, no such trial is prescribed, and the property
being transported is immediately impounded by the police and declared, by the measure itself, as
forfeited to the government.

To sum up then, we find that the challenged measure is an invalid exercise of the police power because
the method employed to conserve the carabaos is not reasonably necessary to the purpose of the law
and, worse, is unduly oppressive. Due process is violated because the owner of the property
confiscated is denied the right to be heard in his defense and is immediately condemned and
punished. The conferment on the administrative authorities of the power to adjudge the guilt of the
supposed offender is a clear encroachment on judicial functions and militates against the doctrine of
separation of powers.