04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly "It is true that Spain, in its earlier decrees, embodied the universal feudal theory that all lands were held from the Crown, and perhaps the general attitude of conquering nations toward people not recognized as entitled to the treatment accorded to those in the same zone of civilization with themselves. It is true, also, that in legal theory, sovereignty is absolute, and that, as against foreign nations, the United States may assert, as Spain asserted, absolute power. But it does not follow that, as against the inhabitants of the Philippines, the United States asserts that Spain had such power. When theory is left on one side, sovereignty is a question of strength, and may vary in degree. How far a new sovereign shall insist upon the theoretical relation of the subjects to the head in the past, and how far it shall recognize actual facts, are matters for it to decide."[137] The U.S. Supreme Court noted that it need not accept Spanish doctrines. The choice was with the new colonizer. Ultimately, the matter had to be decided under U.S. law. The Cariño decision largely rested on the North American constitutionalist's concept of "due process" as well as the pronounced policy "to do justice to the natives."[138] It was based on the strong mandate extended to the Islands via the Philippine Bill of 1902 that "No law shall be enacted in said islands which shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person therein the equal protection of the laws." The court declared: "The acquisition of the Philippines was not like the settlement of the white race in the United States. Whatever consideration may have been shown to the North American Indians, the dominant purpose of the whites in America was to occupy land. It is obvious that, however stated, the reason for our taking over the Philippines was different. No one, we suppose, would deny that, so far as consistent with paramount necessities, our first object in the internal administration of the islands is to do justice to the natives, not to exploit their country for private gain. By the Organic Act of July 1, 1902, chapter 1369, section 12 (32 Statutes at Large, 691), all the property and rights acquired there by the United States are to be administered 'for the benefit of the inhabitants thereof.' It is reasonable to suppose that the attitude thus assumed by the United States with regard to what was unquestionably its own is also its attitude in deciding what it will claim for its own. The same statute made a bill of rights, embodying the safeguards of the Constitution, and, like the Constitution, extends those safeguards to all. It provides that 'no law shall be enacted in said islands which shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person therein the equal protection of the laws.' In the light of the 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 inhabitants 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,-- of the profoundest factors in human thought,-- regarded as their own."[139] elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/36882 30/148