10/12/2019 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly between and among indigenous cultural communities/indigenous peoples for so long as there is a member of ani indigenous cultural communities/indigenous peoples involved creates an unnecessary artificial enclave that maintains the insidious caricatures of backward peoples insisted by our colonial past. Indigenous peoples are not that strange that they cannot deal with or be dealt with by regular courts. To insist otherwise is to betray the desire of empowerment implicit in the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act. II There is also another equally important Constitutional principle at stake in our interpretation of Section 66 of the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act. This pertains to the extent of the power of Congress to create enclaves of administrative bodies with quasijudicial jurisdiction removing from the judiciary conflicts, which it should constitutionally adjudicate. The traditional justification of the grant of quasi-judicial powers to administrative bodies under the control and supervision of the Executive was that it was necessary to be able to deal with the perceived complexities of modem life. There was recognition that the resolution of some conflicts required technical expertise for which judges in regular courts were not equipped. However, there is a trend towards the specialization of regular courts of justice. Today, we have specialized Family Courts,[4] environmental salas,[5] and commercial courts, among others. Recently, we authorized the designation of specialized cybercrime courts.[6] Furthermore, under the supervision of the Supreme Court, we have the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA) that routinely holds courses on very specialized subjects. The requirements for taking the bar have been liberalized. Consequently, the basic training of judges is now different from what it was when this Court found the basis for quasi-judicial jurisdiction. Now, we have judges who are also trained engineers, molecular biologists, math majors, economists, and psychologists, apart from those who specialize in political science or philosophy. While administrative agencies with quasi-judicial powers were an initial modality to deal with modernity, they would not be the only exclusive approach. In my view, the power of the Judiciary to adjudicate remains vulnerable unless we shape the parameters for granting quasi-judicial jurisdiction to administrative agencies with greater clarity and precision. The grant of judicial power to the Judiciary cannot be undermined by Congressional action through the unbounded transfer of adjudicatory powers to quasi-judicial administrative agencies. In my view, controversies may be adjudicated by administrative agencies only when the resolution of conflicts among parties are necessary in order that the Executive department can implement a program mandated by law. For instance, conflicting applications of two (2) applicants to the same bandwidth may be settled by an administrative body because it is necessary to comply with the standards and procedures for allocating a scarce resource. In the same manner, a controversy elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/63044 30/32