Legislative Journal and Congressional Record The enrolled bill doctrine This Court found in the journals no signs of irregularity in the passage of the law and Mabanag v Lopez Vito
FACTS: Three of the plaintiff senators and eight of the plaintiff representatives had been proclaimed by a majority vote of the Commission on Elections as having been elected senators and representatives in the elections held on April 23, 1946. The three senators were suspended by the Senate shortly after the opening of the first session of Congress following the elections, on account of alleged irregularities in their election. The eight representatives since their election had not been allowed to sit in the lower House, except to take part in the election of the Speaker, for the same reason, although they had not been formally suspended. A resolution for their suspension had been introduced in the House of Representatives, but that resolution had not been acted upon definitely by the House when the present petition was filed. As a consequence these three senators and eight representatives did not take part in the passage of the questioned Congressional resolution ("Resolution of both h ouses proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the Philippines to be appended as an ordinance thereto.") nor was their membership reckoned within the computation of the necessary three-fourths vote which is required in proposing an amendment to the Constitution. If these members of Congress had been counted, the affirmative votes in favor of the proposed amendment would have been short of the necessary threefourths vote in either branch of Congress. ISSUE: 1. Whether a duly authenticated bill or resolution imports absolute verity and is binding on the courts. HELD: 1. Yes. It will be seen upon examination of section 313 of the Code of Civil Procedure, as amended byAct No. 2210, that, roughly, it provides two methods of pro ving legislative proceedings: (1) by the journals, or by published statutes or resolutions, or by copies certified by the clerk or secretary or printed by their order; and (2) in case of acts of the Legislature, by a copy signed by the presiding officers and secretaries thereof, which shall be conclusive proof of the provisions of such Acts and of t he due enactment thereof.
did not bother itself with considering the effects of an authenticated copy if one had been introduced. It did not do what the opponents of the rule of conclusiveness advocate, namely, look into the journals behind the enrolled copy in order to determine the correctness of the latter, and rule such copy out if the two, the journals and the copy, be found in conflict with each other. No discrepancy appears to have been noted between the two documents. There is an explicit provision that duly certified copies "shall be conclusive proof of the provisions of such Acts and of the due enactment thereof." Note: a) Enrolled bill theory – The enrolled bill is conclusive upon the courts as regards the tenor of the measure passed by Congress and approved by the President. If a mistake as in fact made in the printing of the bill before it was certified by the officers of the Congress and approved by the Chief Executive, the remedy is amendment or corrective legislation, not by judicial decree. b) Some of these reasons in favor of the enrolled bill is summarized in 50 AmericanJurisprudence, section 150 as follows: SEC. 150. Reasons for Conclusiveness. — It has been declared that the rule against going behind the enrolled bill is required by the respect due to a coequal and independent department of the government, and it would be an inquisition into the conduct of the members of the legislature, a very delicate power, the frequent exercise of which must lead to endless confusion in the administration of the law. The rule is also one of convenience, because courts could not rely on the published session laws, but would be required to look beyond these to the journals of the legislature and often to any printed bills and amendments which might be found after the adjournment of the legislature. Otherwise, after relying on the prima facie evidence of the enrolled bills, authenticated as exacted by the Constitution, for years, it might be ascertained from the journals that an act theretofore enforced had never become a law. In this respect, it has been declared that these is quite enough uncertainty as to what the law is without saying that no one may be certain that an act of the legislature has become such until the issue has been determined by some court whose decision might not be regarded as conclusive in an action between the parties. c) The Court deemed it unnecessary to decide the question of whether the senators and representatives who were ignored in the computation of the necessary threefourths vote were members of Congress within the meaning of section 1 of Article XV of the Philippine Constitution.
