The recently concluded oral arguments in the Baluyut case raise questions that touch on fundamental constitutional principles concerning marriage, the family, and the proper limits of judicial power.
Family and Marriage
The concept of family is often used broadly to describe individuals who share a dwelling and profess common values that give rise to emotional bonds and mutual support.
The Constitution, however, uses the term Family in a precise and deliberate sense. It expressly identifies marriage as the foundation of the family, and the family as the foundation of the nation. To provide this foundational stability and integrity, marriage is legally defined as a permanent union between a man and a woman and is recognized as an inviolable social institution whose nature, consequences and incidents are governed by law.
The constitutional family is therefore more than a group of people connected by affection, residence or kinship. It is an institution in which the law establishes enduring rights, obligations and responsibilities, particularly between spouses and between parents and children. These include obligations of mutual support and care, parental responsibility, and the provision for the needs and formation of children.
It is precisely because the family carries these enduring responsibilities and performs such a fundamental social function that it demands more than social recognition: the State is constitutionally mandated to strengthen, protect and actively promote it. While society may use family in expansive and evolving ways, the State has a particular responsibility toward the Family as an institution established and rooted in marriage.
Foreign Divorce
Article 26(2) of the Family Code addresses a specific situation: a mixed marriage in which a Filipino and a foreign national validly marry, and the foreign spouse subsequently obtains a valid foreign divorce that capacitates him or her to remarry. In that limited circumstance, the Filipino spouse shall likewise have the capacity to remarry under Philippine law.
This provision should not be construed or employed as a backdoor legalization of divorce. The deliberations of the Joint Civil Code and Family Law Committee make clear that Article 26(2) was crafted as a narrow exception, intended to prevent the inequity that would arise when a foreign spouse obtains a divorce decree, leaving the Filipino spouse bound to a marital tie that no longer exists in fact.
The exception was never designed to dilute or erode the State’s public policy against absolute divorce.
Human Right
The human right to choose whom to love is rooted in personal freedom, conscience, and the dignity of each person. And the dignity of the human person is always relational: each person’s flourishing is tied to the flourishing of others. Thus, the freedom to love, to be an authentic human right, is never isolated from the common good. It must be exercised in ways that respect not only one’s own dignity but also the dignity of those affected by that relationship—spouses, children, families, and the broader community. Love, in this sense, is not merely a personal choice but a moral act with social consequences.
When this right, however, is understood in a purely individualistic sense—detached from responsibility, community, and the moral implications of human relationships—it can be distorted into a claim that personal desire alone is the highest norm. In such a view, love becomes a private entitlement rather than a relational commitment that is ordered to the good of others—families, communities, and society—and becomes contrary to the very human right it invokes.
Judicial Legislation
A core constitutional principle is the separation of powers among the three co-equal branches of government. Within this framework, the Supreme Court is vested with the authority to interpret the law—not to create policy or supply what it believes the law ought to be.
Judicial review does not include the power to revise statutes to accommodate perceived social needs or shifting public sentiment. The public policy against absolute divorce remains in force, regardless of claims that the concept of public policy has become outdated.
There is currently no law that provides a mechanism through which a Filipino spouse may obtain a divorce decree on his or her own initiative. Unless and until Congress enacts an amendatory statute, the Court is bound to apply the law as written and to respect the policy choices made by the political branches.
The separation of powers, therefore, requires the Court to resist legislating through judicial interpretation.
(signed) Maria Concepcion S. Noche – President