04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly and, that the decision on the constitutional or legal question must be necessary to the determination of the case itself. But the most important are the first two requisites.[3] For a court to exercise its power of adjudication, there must be an actual case or controversy -- one which involves a conflict of legal rights, an assertion of opposite legal claims susceptible of judicial resolution; the case must not be moot or academic or based on extra-legal or other similar considerations not cognizable by a court of justice. A case becomes moot and academic when its purpose has become stale.[4] An action is considered "moot" when it no longer presents a justiciable controversy because the issues involved have become academic or dead or when the matter in dispute has already been resolved and hence, one is not entitled to judicial intervention unless the issue is likely to be raised again between the parties. Simply stated, there is nothing for the court to resolve as the determination thereof has been overtaken by subsequent events.[5] Such is the case here. The MOA has not even been signed, and will never be. Its provisions will not at all come into effect. The MOA will forever remain a draft that has never been finalized. It is now nothing more than a piece of paper, with no legal force or binding effect. It cannot be the source of, nor be capable of violating, any right. The instant Petitions, therefore, and all other oppositions to the MOA, have no more leg to stand on. They no longer present an actual case or a justiciable controversy for resolution by this Court. An actual case or controversy exists when there is a conflict of legal rights or an assertion of opposite legal claims, which can be resolved on the basis of existing law and jurisprudence. A justiciable controversy is distinguished from a hypothetical or abstract difference or dispute, in that the former involves a definite and concrete dispute touching on the legal relations of parties having adverse legal interests. A justiciable controversy admits of specific relief through a decree that is conclusive in character, whereas an opinion only advises what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.[6] For the Court to still rule upon the supposed unconstitutionality of the MOA will merely be an academic exercise. It would, in effect, only be delivering an opinion or advice on what are now hypothetical or abstract violations of constitutional rights. In Abbas v. Commission on Elections,[7] the 1976 Tripoli Agreement and Republic Act No. 6734 (the Organic Act for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao) were challenged for purported violations of the provisions of the Constitution on freedom of religion. The Court held therein that it should not inquire into the constitutionality of a peace agreement which was already consummated (the 1976 Tripoli Agreement) and an Organic Act which was already passed into law (R.A. No. 6734) just because of potential conflicts with the Constitution. Then, with more reason should this Court desist from ruling on the constitutionality of the MOA which is unsigned, and now entirely abandoned, and as such, cannot even have any potential conflict with the Constitution. The Court should not feel constrained to rule on the Petitions at bar just because of elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 155/203