4/7/2021 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly xxx Thus, there is no actual case involved in a Petition for Declaratory Relief. It cannot, therefore, be the proper vehicle to invoke the judicial review powers to declare a statute unconstitutional. It is elementary that before this Court can rule on a constitutional issue, there must first be a justiciable controversy. A justiciable controversy refers to an existing case or controversy that is appropriate or ripe for judicial determination, not one that is conjectural or merely anticipatory. As We emphasized in Angara v. Electoral Commission, any attempt at abstraction could only lead to dialectics and barren legal questions and to sterile conclusions unrelated to actualities. To question the constitutionality of the subject issuances, respondents should have invoked the expanded certiorari jurisdiction under Section 1 of Article VIII of the 1987 Constitution. The adverted section defines judicial power as the power not only "to settle actual controversies involving rights which are legally demandable and enforceable," but also "to determine whether or not there has been a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of any branch or instrumentality of the Government." There is a grave abuse of discretion when there is patent violation of the Constitution, the law, or existing jurisprudence. On this score, it has been ruled that "the remedies of certiorari and prohibition are necessarily broader in scope and reach, and the writ of certiorari or prohibition may be issued to correct errors of jurisdiction committed not only by a tribunal, corporation, board or officer exercising judicial, quasi-judicial or ministerial functions, but also to set right, undo[,] and restrain any act of grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction by any branch or instrumentality of the Government, even if the latter does not exercise judicial, quasijudicial or ministerial functions." Thus, petitions for certiorari and prohibition are the proper remedies where an action of the legislative branch is seriously alleged to have infringed the Constitution. (Emphasis supplied) In Diaz et at v. Secretary of Finance, et al.,[48] the Court, nonetheless, held that a petition for declaratory relief may be treated as one for prohibition if the case has farreaching implications and raises questions that need to be resolved for the public good; or if the assailed act or acts of executive officials are alleged to have usurped legislative authority, thus: On August 24, 2010 the Court issued a resolution, treating the petition as one for prohibition rather than one for declaratory relief, the characterization that petitioners Diaz and Timbol gave their action. The government has sought reconsideration of the Court's resolution, however, arguing that petitioners' allegations clearly made out a case for declaratory relief, an action over which the Court has no original jurisdiction. The government https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/65912 14/25