5/19/2021 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly power; (2) the person challenging the act must have "standing" to challenge; he must have a personal and substantial interest in the case such that he has sustained, or will sustain, direct injury as a result of its enforcement; (3) the question of constitutionality must be raised at the earliest possible opportunity; and (4) the issue of constitutionality must be the very lis mota of the case.[13] An actual case or controversy means an existing case or controversy that is appropriate or ripe for determination, not conjectural or anticipatory, lest the decision of the court would amount to an advisory opinion. The rule is that courts do not sit to adjudicate mere academic questions to satisfy scholarly interest, however intellectually challenging. The controversy must be justiciable—definite and concrete, touching on the legal relations of parties having adverse legal interests. In other words, the pleadings must show an active antagonistic assertion of a legal right, on the one hand, and a denial thereof, on the other; that is, it must concern a real, tangible and not merely a theoretical question or issue. There ought to be an actual and substantial controversy admitting of specific relief through a decree conclusive in nature, as distinguished from an opinion advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.[14] Corollary to the requirement of an actual case or controversy is the requirement of ripeness. A question is ripe for adjudication when the act being challenged has had a direct adverse effect on the individual challenging it. For a case to be considered ripe for adjudication, it is a prerequisite that something has then been accomplished or performed by either branch before a court may come into the picture, and the petitioner must allege the existence of an immediate or threatened injury to himself as a result of the challenged action. He must show that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as a result of the act complained of.[15] Here, petitioners did not allege that they already sustained or are immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury from R.A. No. 11199: The mere passage of the law does not per se absolutely determine the justiciability of a particular case attacking the law's constitutionality. Petitioners did not even allege that the law is already implemented against their interests. They simply gave a broad statement that "[t]he execution of Section 9-B of the 2018 SSS Law will definitely work injustice and irreparable damage to the petitioner manning agencies which are made to answer to so much liabilities as employer when it is not the seafarer's employer."[16] Again, there must be an immediate or threatening injury to petitioners as a result of the challenged action; and not a mere speculation. https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/66432 6/28