Pelaex vs Auditor General

Facts:
On1964, President Ferdinand Marcos issued executive orders creating 33 municipalities this
was purportedly pursuant to Section 68 of the Revised Administrative Code which provides in
part:
The President may by executive order define the boundary of
any municipality and may change the seat of government within any subdivision
to such place therein as the public welfare may require

The then Vice President, Emmanuel Pelaez, filed a special civil action to prohibit the auditor
general from disbursing funds to be appropriated for the said municipalities. Pelaez claims that
the EOs were unconstitutional. He said that Section 68 of the RAC had been impliedly repealed
by Section 3 of RA 2370 which provides that barrios may not be created or their boundaries
altered nor their names changed except by Act of Congress.

Pelaez argues: If the President, under this new law, cannot even create a barrio, how can he
create a municipality which is composed of several barrios, since barrios are units of
municipalities?

The Auditor General countered that there was no repeal and that only barrios were barred from
being created by the President. Municipalities are exempt from the bar and that a municipality
can be created without creating barrios. He further maintains that through Sec. 68 of the RAC,
Congress has delegated such power to create municipalities to the President.

Issue: Whether or not Congress has delegated the power to create barrios to the President by
virtue of Sec. 68 of the RAC.

Ruling: No. There was no delegation here. Although Congress may delegate to another branch
of the government the power to fill in the details in the execution, enforcement or administration
of a law, it is essential, to forestall a violation of the principle of separation of powers, that said

law: (a) be complete in itself it must set forth therein the policy to be executed, carried out or
implemented by the delegate and (b) fix a standard the limits of which are sufficiently
determinate or determinable to which the delegate must conform in the performance of his
functions. In this case, Sec. 68 lacked any such standard. Indeed, without a statutory declaration
of policy, the delegate would, in effect, make or formulate such policy, which is the essence of
every law; and, without the aforementioned standard, there would be no means to determine,
with reasonable certainty, whether the delegate has acted within or beyond the scope of his
authority.
Further, although Sec. 68 provides the qualifying clause as the public welfare may require
which would mean that the President may exercise such power as the public welfare may require
is present, still, such will not replace the standard needed for a proper delegation of power. In
the first place, what the phrase as the public welfare may require qualifies is the text which
immediately precedes hence, the proper interpretation is the President may change the seat of
government within any subdivision to such place therein as the public welfare may require.
Only the seat of government may be changed by the President when public welfare so requires
and NOT the creation of municipality.

The Supreme Court declared that the power to create municipalities is essentially and eminently
legislative in character not administrative (not executive).