Separate Concurring Opinion 27 G.R. No. 224469 On June 22, 1903, Mateo Carino (Carino), an Igorot of the Province of Benguet, filed a petition before the Court of Land Registration in order to register a piece of land located in the same province. 135 According to Carino, he and his ancestors owned the land over 50 years before the Treaty of Paris. They have maintained fences for cattle and have cultivated the land subject of the petition for registration. Furthermore, they have been recognized as owners of the land by the other Igorots. Carino also stated that he had inherited the land from his father in accordance with Igorot custom, and that he had made prior applications before the Spanish Crown to register the land, but nothing seemed to have come of it. 136 The Court of Land Registration gave due course to the petition for registration. However, the Benguet Court of First Instance reversed the decision on appeal and dismissed Carino' s application. This decision was affirmed by the Philippine Supreme Court. 137 Through a writ ~of e,rror, the case reached the United States Supreme Court. It reversed the Philippine Supreme Court's decision and upheld Carino's ownership of the land in question. The United States Supreme Court decreed that, whatever Spain's position may have been in relation to the status of Carino' s application for registration, it does not follow that he had lost his rights over the land subject of registration when the United States assumed sovereignty over the Philippines. Thus: The argument to that effect seems to amount to a denial of native titles throughout an important part of the island of Luzon, at least, for the want of ceremonies which the Spaniards would not have permitted and had not the power to enforce. 138 Citing the Philippine Bill of 1902, the United States Supreme Court went on further and held: In the light 9f th~ declaration that we have quoted from section 12, it is hard to believe- that the United States was ready to declare in the next breath that "any person" did not embrace the inhabitan~s of Benguet, or that it meant by "property" only that which had become such by ceremonies of which presumably a large part of the inhabitants never had heard, and that it proposed to treat as public land what they, by native custom and by long association - one of the profoundest factors in human thought - regarded as their own. 134 135 136 137 138 J. Leonen, Separate Opinion in Heirs a/Malabanan v. Republic, 717 Phil. 141, 208-209 (2013) [Per J. Bersamin, En Banc]. Owen James Lynch, Jr., Native Title, Private Right and Tribal Land Law: An Introductory Survey, 57 PHIL. L. J. 268, 276 (1982). Carino v. Insular Government, 212 U.S. 449,456 (1909). Carino v. Insular Government, 7 Phil. 132 (1906) [Per J. Willard, En Banc]. Carino v. Insular Government, 212 U.S. 449, 458 (1909).