G.R. No. L-35739 July 2, 1979
LILIA Y. GONZALES, petitioner, vs. CONRADO F. ESTRELLA, in his capacity as Secretary of the Department of Agrarian Reform, respondent.

FACTS

Petitioner Lilia Y. Gonzales is the owner of a 63.5959-hectare irrigated riceland in Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo, which is cultivated by thirty tenants under a leasehold tenancy arrangement. She filed a petition for prohibition challenging the constitutionality of Presidential Decree No. 27, which decreed the emancipation of tenant farmers by transferring to them ownership of the land they till. The Decree allowed a tenant to own a family-size farm of three hectares for irrigated land, while a landowner could retain an area not exceeding seven hectares.
The petitioner anchored her challenge on the validity of Proclamation No. 1081, which declared martial law throughout the Philippines. She argued that if the declaration of martial law was invalid, then General Order No. 1 and Presidential Decree No. 27, which were issued pursuant to it, would likewise be invalid. The petition thus presented the constitutionality of PD No. 27 as dependent on the validity of the martial law proclamation.

ISSUE

The principal issue is whether Presidential Decree No. 27 is constitutional, which hinges on the validity of Proclamation No. 1081 declaring martial law.

RULING

The Supreme Court dismissed the petition and upheld the constitutionality of Presidential Decree No. 27. The Court ruled that the validity of Proclamation No. 1081 had been unequivocally upheld in the prior case of Aquino Jr. v. Ponce Enrile. In that decision, the Court recognized, as a matter of contemporary history, that a state of rebellion existed when the proclamation was issued and that such rebellion continued, necessitating martial law nationwide to counteract its sophisticated and clandestine ramifications.
Furthermore, the Court emphasized that the transitory provision of the 1973 Constitution (Article XVII, Section 3(2)) expressly provided that all proclamations, orders, and decrees issued by the incumbent President remained part of the law of the land. This constitutional imprimatur foreclosed any challenge to the validity of Proclamation No. 1081 and, by extension, the decrees issued under its authority. The Court also cited its ruling in Chavez v. Zobel, which stressed the imperative need for the agrarian reform program embodied in PD No. 27 to emancipate tenants from feudal bondage, a goal now enshrined as a constitutional mandate. Therefore, the decree having survived constitutional scrutiny, the petition for prohibition could not prosper.