MERLIN MAGALONA VS ERMITA sovereignty and national

security
FACTS 3. KIG’s classification as the
1. There was a framing of the UNCLOS I codifying among others the regime of islanss not only
sovereign right of state parties over “territorial sea”the breadth of result in the loss of a
large maritime area but
which was left undertemined.
also prejudice the
2. Congress passed Republic Act 3046 demarcating the maritime
livelihood of substinence
baselines of the Philippines as an archipelagic state.( this law was fishermen
remained unchanged for 5 years) The propriety of the writ of
3. A legislation was passed RA 5446 correcting the typographical erros certiorari-
and reserving the drawing of the baselines around SABAH and North Merely a compliance with the
Borneo. UNCLOS
4. RA 9552- the statute now in scrutity. The change was prompted by
the need to make RA 3046 compliant with the terms of United
Nations Convention on the law of the sea (UNCLOS) Which the ISSUE: Whether or not RA 9522 IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
Philippines Ratified. RULING: no
5. Unclos – prescribed water land ratio, length and contour of
baselines of archipelagic states continental shelf 1. Whether or not RA 9522 dismembers a large portion of the national
territory because it discards pre-unclos demarcation of the Philippine
What RA 9522 DID WAS : territory under the TREATY OF PARTIS and related treaties.
It shortened the baseline, optimized the location of some basepoints No. According to the Petitioner, the Philippine’s sovereignty over the
around the Philippine archipelago and classified adjacent terriotires territorial waters extends to hundred of nautical miles around the Philippine
namely the Kalayaan Island Groups and the Scarborough Shoal as archipelago embracing the rectangular area as provided for in the treaty of
regime of islands whose island generate their own applicable maritime paris.
zones.
The court rules otherwise. UNCLOS has nothing to do with the
PETITIONER RESPONDNET acquisition or loss of territory. .It is a multilateral tereaty regulating among
1. RA 9522- reduces the Lack of locus standi others the sea use rights over maritime zones, contiguous zones, exclusive
Philippine maritime economic zones and continental shelves that UNCLOS III delimits. That
territory and logically the UNCLOS was the culmination of decades long negotiation among United
reach of the Philippine
Nation members to codify norms, regulating the conduct of states in the
state’s sovereign power
world’s ocean and submarine areas, recognizing the coastal and archipelagic
2. Opens the country’s
waters landward of the state’s graduated authority over al imited span of waters and submarine
baselines to martime lands to their cost.
passage by all vessels and
aircradts, which
undermines Philippine