04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly Rights Must Be Within the Constitutional Framework With due respect, however, I dissent from the ponencia's resolution of the two main substantive issues, which constitute the core of this case. Specifically, I submit that Republic Act (RA) No. 8371, otherwise known as the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997, violates and contravenes the Constitution of the Philippines insofar as -1. It recognizes or, worse, grants rights of ownership over "lands of the public domain, waters, x x x and other natural resources" which, under Section 2, Article XII of the Constitution, "are owned by the State" and "shall not be alienated." I respectfully reject the contention that "ancestral lands and ancestral domains are not public lands and have never been owned by the State." Such sweeping statement places substantial portions of Philippine territory outside the scope of the Philippine Constitution and beyond the collective reach of the Filipino people. As will be discussed later, these real properties constitute a third of the entire Philippine territory; and the resources, 80 percent of the nation's natural wealth. 2. It defeats, dilutes or lessens the authority of the State to oversee the "exploration, development, and utilization of natural resources," which the Constitution expressly requires to "be under the full control and supervision of the State." True, our fundamental law mandates the protection of the indigenous cultural communities' right to their ancestral lands, but such mandate is "subject to the provisions of this Constitution."[4] I concede that indigenous cultural communities and indigenous peoples (ICCs/IPs) may be accorded preferential rights to the beneficial use of public domains, as well as priority in the exploration, development and utilization of natural resources. Such privileges, however, must be subject to the fundamental law. Consistent with the social justice principle of giving more in law to those who have less in life, Congress in its wisdom may grant preferences and prerogatives to our marginalized brothers and sisters, subject to the irreducible caveat that the Constitution must be respected. I personally believe in according every benefit to the poor, the oppressed and the disadvantaged, in order to empower them to equally enjoy the blessings of nationhood. I cannot, however, agree to legitimize perpetual inequality of access to the nation's wealth or to stamp the Court's imprimatur on a law that offends and degrades the repository of the very authority of this Court -- the Constitution of the Philippines. The Constitution Is a Compact My basic premise is that the Constitution is the fundamental law of the land, to which all other laws must conform.[5] It is the people's quintessential act of sovereignty, embodying the principles upon which the State and the government are founded.[6] Having the status of a supreme and all-encompassing law, it speaks for all the people all the time, not just for the majority or for the minority at intermittent times. Every constitution is a compact made by and among the citizens of a State to elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/36882 134/148