ARTICLE III

BILL OF RIGHTS

Section 1. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law nor
shall any person be denied the equal protection of the law.

1. Purpose of the Bill of Rights

- The government is powerful so the Bill of Rights guarantees that there are certain
areas of a person’s life, liberty, and property which governmental power may not
touch.
2. The Great Three Powers of the Government
a. Police Power
b. Power of Eminent Domain
c. Power of Taxation

3. Police Power
- characterized as “the most essential, insistent and the least limitable of powers,
extending as it does to all the great public needs” and defined as “that inherent
and plenary power in the State which enables it to prohibit all that is hurtful to the
comfort, safety and welfare of society.
Right to Life
- Not just a protection of the right to be alive or to the security of one’s limb against
physical harm. The right to life is the right to a good life; to promote a life of
“dignity” and guarantees “decent standard of living”.
Property
- Includes all kinds of property found in the Civil Code. It has been deemed to
include vested rights such as a perfected mining claim, or a perfected
homestead, or a final judgment. It also includes the right to work and the right to
earn a living.
Liberty
- Denotes not merely freedom from physical restraint. It also embraces the right of
man to use his faculties with which he has been endowed by his Creator subject
only to the limitation that he does not violate the law or the rights of others. (De
Leon, 2014)
4. Primacy of Human Rights
- The primacy of human rights over property rights is recognized. In the hierarchy
of civil liberties, the rights of free expression and of assembly occupy a preferred
position as they are essential to the preservation and vitality of our civil and
political rights.
5. Due Process in General
- Any deprivation of life, liberty or property by the State us with due process if it is
done:
a. Under the authority of a law that is valid
b. After compliance with fair and reasonable methods of procedure prescribed
by law
 6. Two Aspects of Due Process
 Procedural Due Process
- As a procedural requirement, it relates chiefly to the mode of procedure which
government agencies must follow in the enforcement and application of laws. It is
a guarantee of procedural fairness. “Law which hears before it condemns”
 Substantive Due Process
- As a substantive requirement, it is a prohibition of arbitrary laws; because, if all
that the due process clause required were proper procedure, then life, liberty, or
property could be destroyed arbitrarily provided proper formalities are observed.

7. Essential requisites of procedural due process

a. There must be a court or tribunal clothed with judicial power to hear and
determine the matter before it.
b. Jurisdiction must be lawfully acquired over the person of the defendant or
over the property which is the subject of the proceedings.
c. The defendant must be given an opportunity to be heard.
d. Judgment must be rendered upon lawful hearing.
8. Essential requirements of procedural due process before administrative agencies
a. The right to actual or constructive notice of the institution of proceedings
which may affect a respondent’s legal rights.
b. A real opportunity to be heard personally or with the assistance of counsel, to
present witnesses and evidence in one’s favor, and to defend one’s rights
c. A tribunal vested with competent jurisdiction and so constituted as to afford a
person charged administratively a reasonable guarantee of honestly as well
as impartiality
d. A finding by said tribunal which is supported by substantial evidence
submitted for consideration during the hearing or contained the records or
made known to the parties affected.
9. Equal Protection of the Law
- Specific constitutional guarantee of the Equality of the Person. The equality it
guarantees is “legal equality or, as it is usually put, the equality of all persons
before the law.

REQUISITES of VALID CLASSIFICATION:

- It must rest on Substantial distinctions
- It must be germane to the purpose of the law.
- It must not be limited to existing conditions only.
- It must apply equally to all members of the same class.

Standards of Judicial Review

a) Rational Basis Test: described as adopting a ‘deferential’ attitude towards legislative
classifications. It applies to legislative classifications in general, such as those pertaining to
economic or social legislation.

b) Strict Scrutiny Test: A legislative classification which impermissibly interferes with the
exercise of a fundamental right or operates to the peculiar disadvantage of a suspect class is
presumed unconstitutional, and the burden is upon government to prove that the classification is
necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and that it is the least restrictive means to
protect such interest. This is used on issues of speech, gender, and race.

c) Intermediate Scrutiny Test: government must show that the challenged classification serves
an important state interest and that the classification is at least substantially related to serving
that interest.

Section 2.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against
unreasonable searches and seizures of whatever nature and for any purpose shall be inviolable,
and no search warrant or warrant of arrest shall issue except upon probable cause to be
determined personally by the judge after examination under oath or affirmation of the
complainant and the witnesses he may produce, and particularly describing the place to be
searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Purpose of the provision

- To protect the privacy and the sanctity of the person and of his house and other
possessions against arbitrary intrusions by State Officers.
Probable Cause
- Such facts and circumstances antecedent to the issuance of a warrant that are in
themselves sufficient to induce a cautious man to rely upon them.
Particularity of Description
- A search warrant may be said to particularly describe the things to be seized
when the description therein is as specific as the circumstances will ordinarily
allow and by which the warrant officer may be guided in making the search and
seizure.
Allowable Warrantless Searches
a. Warrantless search incidental to a lawful arrest.
i. Item to be searched was within the arrestee’s custody or area of
immediate control.
ii. Search was contemporaneous with an arrest.

b. Seizure of evidence in “plain view”

Requisites:
i. Prior valid intrusion
ii. Evidence was inadvertently discovered by the police
iii. Illegality of the evidence is immediately apparent; and
iv. Noticed without further search.

c. Search of a moving vehicle - There must be a highly reasonable suspicion

amounting to probable cause that the occupant committed a criminal activity.

d. Consented warrantless search

Requisites of a consented warrantless search
i. It must appear first that the rights exists
ii. The person involved had knowledge, either actual or constructive, of the
existence of such right.
 iii. The person had actual intention to relinquish the right.
e. Customs search
f. Stop and Frisk - Where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads
him reasonably to conclude in the light of his experience that criminal activity
may be afoot and that the person with whom he is dealing may be armed and
presently dangerous, where in the course of investigation of this behavior he
identify himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries, and where
nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear
for his own or others’ safety, he is entitled for the protection of himself and others
in the area to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such
persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him.
- Probable cause is not required. However, mere suspicion or a hunch is not
enough. Rather, a “genuine reason must exist, in light of the police officer’s
experience and surrounding conditions, to warrant the belief that the person
detained has weapons concealed about him.”

g. Exigent and Emergency Circumstances

- Situations when the officers have no opportunity to apply for and secure a
warrant from the courts.

*Drug, Alcohol and Blood Tests

Requisites to be valid:
1. It must be random, and
2. It must be suspicionless.

The constitutional validity of the mandatory, random, and suspicionless drug testing for
students emanates primarily from the waiver of their right to privacy when they seek entry to
the school, and from their voluntary submitting their persons to the parental authority of
school authorities.
In case of private and public employees, the constitutional soundness of the mandatory,
random and suspicious drug testing proceeds from the reasonableness of the drug test
policy and requirement.
However, there is no valid justification for mandatory drug testing for persons accused of
crimes punishable with at least 6 years and one day imprisonment as they are singled out
and impleaded against their will. The operative concepts in the mandatory drug testing are
“randomness” and “suspicionless.”

Pimentel, Jr v. COMELEC, GR 161658, November 3, 2008: The mandatory drug test

requirements as a pre-condition for the validity of a certificate of candidacy of electoral
candidates not established under the Constitution, e.g. local government positions, is valid.

Allowable warrantless arrest

- A peace officer or a private person may, without warrant, arrest a person:
a. When, in his presence, the person to be arrested has committed, is actually
committing, or attempting to commit an offense.
b. When an offense has in fact been committed, and he has personal knowledge of
fact indicating that the person to be arrested has committed it.
c. When the person to be arrested is a prisoner who has escaped from a penal
establishment or place where he is serving final judgment or temporarily confined
 while his case is pending, or has escaped while being transferred from one
confinement to another.

A. In Flagrante Delicto

B. Hot Pursuit
Two Requisites:
1. An offense had just been committed.
2. The person making the arrest has probable cause to believe, based on his personal
knowledge of facts and circumstances, that the person to be arrested committed it.
*There must be immediacy between the time the offense is committed and the time of
the arrest.

C. Escaped Prisoner

D. Waiver
E. Procedural Rules