04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly upon. At the same time, I deem it impolitic to simply vote for the dismissal the cases at bar without further discourse in view of their uniqueness in two aspects. At the center is an agreement and yet a party to it was not impleaded before it was forsaken. And while the unimpleaded party is neither a state nor an international legal person, the cases are laden with international law underpinnings or analogies which it may capitalize on to stir adverse epiphenomenal consequences. According to news reports, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has adopted the posture that as far as it is concerned, the MOA-AD is already effective, and there may be indeed a tenuous linkage between that stance and the apparent fact that the MOA-AD, though unsigned, bears the initials of members of the Philippine negotiating panel, the MILF negotiating panel and the peace negotiator of the Malaysian government. These concerns warrant an extended discussion on the MOAAD, even if the present petitions are moot and academic. I. It is a bulwark principle in constitutional law that an essential requisite for a valid judicial inquiry is the existence of an actual case or controversy. A justiciable controversy must be definite and concrete, touching the legal relations of parties having adverse legal interests. It must be a real and substantial controversy admitting of specific relief through a decree that is conclusive in character, as distinguished from an opinion advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.[1] The exercise of the power of judicial review depends upon the existence of a case or controversy. Consequently, if a case ceases to be a lively controversy, there is no justification for the exercise of the power, otherwise, the court would be rendering an advisory opinion should it do so.[2] We held in Gancho-on v. Secretary of Labor:[3] It is a rule of universal application, almost, that courts of justice constituted to pass upon substantial rights will not consider questions in which no actual interests are involved; they decline jurisdiction of moot cases. And where the issue has become moot and academic, there is no justiciable controversy, so that a declaration thereon would be of no practical use or value.There is no actual substantial relief to which petitioners would be entitled and which would be negated by the dismissal of the petition. In the recent ruling in Suplico v. NEDA,[4] the President officially desisted from pursuing a national government project which was challenged before this Court. The Court was impelled to take mandatory judicial notice[5] of the President's act, and consequently declare the pending petitions as moot and academic. The Court, through Justice Reyes, held: Concomitant to its fundamental task as the ultimate citadel of justice and legitimacy is the judiciary's role of strengthening political stability indispensable to progress and national development.Pontificating on issues which no longer legitimately constitute an actual case or controversy will do more harm than good to the nation as a whole.Wise elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 139/203