LECTURE NOTES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS POLITICAL LAW branch of public law which deals with the

e organization and operations of the governmental organs of the state and defines the relations of the State with the inhabitants of its territory. Political law embraces Constitutional Law I and II, Administrative Law, the Law of Public Officers, Election Law and the Law on Municipal Corporations. Constitutional Law I is a study of the structure and powers of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines. It also deals with certain basic concepts of Political Law such as the nature of the State, the supremacy of the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of the majority. Every citizen, regardless of calling, should understand the mechanics and motivation of his government. Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them. It is upon the active involvement in public affairs of every Filipino that the success of the Philippines will depend. Basics of the study Constitution of the Philippines 1. Commonwealth Constitution 2. 1973 Constitution (during Martial Law) 3. Freedom Constitution 4. 1987 Constitution Constitution the basic and paramount law to which all other laws must conform and to which all persons, including the highest officials of the land, must defer. It must ever REMAIN SUPREME and must be upheld as long as it has not been changed by the sovereign people. STATE The State is a community of persons, more or less numerous, permanently occupying a fixed territory, and possessed of an independent government, organized for political ends to which the great body of inhabitants render habitual obedience. Essential Elements of a State 1. People inhabitants of the state 2. Territory fixed portion of the surface of the earth inhabited by the people. Composed of the land mass (terrestrial domain), the inland and external waters (maritime and fluvial domain) and the air space (aerial domain). 3. Government agency or instrumentality through which the will of the State is formulated expressed and realized. WHATEVER GOOD IS DONE BY THE GOVERNMENT IS ATTRIBUTED TO THE STATE BUT EVERY HARM INFLICTED ON THE PEOPLE IS IMPUTED NOT TO THE STATE BUT TO THE GOVERNMENT ALONE. Such injury may justify the replacement of the government by revolution, theoretically at the behest of the State, in a development known as direct State action. 4. Sovereignty THE NATIONAL TERRITORY comprises the Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and waters embraced therein, and all other territories over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction, consisting of its terrestrial, fluvial and aerial domains, including its territorial sea, the seabed, the subsoil, the insular shelves, and other submarine areas. The waters around, between and connecting the islands of the archipelago, regardless of their breadth and dimensions, form part of the internal waters of the Philippines