CONGRESS passed the other week a joint resolution extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) for another six months but excluding the compulsory acquisition of agricultural lands provided for under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) signed by President Corazon Aquino on June 10, 1988.

The exclusion was angrily protested by the farmers who called it a betrayal of the law that was enacted for their benefit under the social justice policy proclaimed by President Manuel L. Quezon in 1935 and later described by Justice Jose P. Laurel as “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.”

The humane jurist was speaking not of justice in its moral and legal sense as praising good and punishing evil. As commonly understood, social justice means food in a man’s stomach, a roof over his head, contentment for his family, medicine for their ailments, education for his children, faith in the promise of the future and, best of all, respect from his peers as a worthy member of society.

The resolution was weakly defended by solons whose vast landholdings have hardly been touched the last 20 years and will remain immune during the next six months and perhaps forever thereafter. They nevertheless prevailed once again in scoffing at President Ramon Magsaysay’s compassionate stand that those with less privileges in life must have more privileges in law.

I myself was not directly injured by the sleight-of-hand manipulated by the legislators who proved once again their expertise in protecting their vested interests against the helpless farmers. But I did feel a personal slight from their cold-blooded suppression of the most important provision of the law calling for the break-up of the big haciendas for their equitable distribution among the landless.

My frustration was personal because of the small part I played in upholding the CARL in the Supreme Court 20 years ago. Soon after it became effective, six petitions were filed against it for various objections, some probably secretly directed by the landowners. The petitions were raffled to me and gave me the task of studying the law that was hoped to give the impoverished masses their place in the sun.

The inequality of land distribution in the Philippines is a serious problem that has plagued our people for centuries. Large estates in the hands of a few privileged families have kept us a feudal society. Separate and piece-meal measures passed in the past have not succeeded in solving this major obstacle to our progress and prosperity. But now, here was Rep. Act No. 6657, appropriately called the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, that would finally deliver a better life to millions of disinherited Filipinos.

The petitions called for a judicious review of the arguments pro and con considered in Congress and Malacañang before the statute was finally approved to the jubilation of the dispossessed farmers. The factual and legal issues included the police power of the State, eminent domain, taxation, due process of law, and equal protection, among many other constitutional issues, with the banner of social justice fluttering on both fronts like the Philippine flag.

Two of my best lawyers in my staff—Anita Jamerlan Rey and Grace Maniquiz Tan—conducted a massive research that diligently continued even beyond their office hours. (I find that the search for pertinent jurisprudence is best assigned to the female of the species as natural busiseras, no offense to Grace and Anitz.)

After examining the memoranda and other pleadings of the parties, I reported to the banc my initial findings on the case and recommended its dismissal. The Supreme Court agreed, and I then undertook the writing of the decision, which is now formally called Association of Small Landowners in the Philippines, Inc. vs. Secretary of Agrarian Reform, 175 SCRA 343. It consisted of 41 single-spaced pages, the longest ponencia I wrote during my entire tenure on the Court. It was unanimously approved by my colleagues; there was no dissent and no need either for a supplemental concurrence.

The members of the Supreme Court who joined me in signing the decision were Chief Justice Marcelo B. Fernan, Justices Andres R. Narvasa, Ameurfina Melencio-Herrera, Hugo E. Gutierrez Jr., Edgardo L. Paras, Florentino P. Feliciano, Emilio A. Gancayco, Teodoro R. Padilla, Abdulwahid A. Bidin, Abraham F. Sarmiento, Irene R. Cortes, Carolina C. Griño-Aquino, Leo D. Medialdea, and Florenz D. Regalado.

In the concluding paragraph of the decision, I expressed in part the farmer’s hope for a better day under the law that has now sadly become disillusionment:

“At last the land on which he toils will be his own. It will be his portion of Mother Earth that will give him not only the staff of life but also the joy of living. And where they once bred for him only deep despair, now can he see in it the fruition of all his hopes for a more fulfilling future. Now at last can he banish from his small plot of earth his insecurities and dark resentments and “rebuild in it the music and the dream.”

But as the poet ruefully said, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice and Men gang aft a-gley.”