1987 Constitution

Also known as: Constitution of the Philippines — the formal title under which the charter is published and cited · 1987 Philippine Constitution — the date-tagged styling in legal literature · Saligang Batas ng 1987 — the Filipino designation · Konstitusyon ng 1987 — the Filipino styling in common use · The Fifth Republic's charter — its functional description, dating the constitutional order from February 1987

Government

Definition

The 1987 Constitution (Filipino: Saligang Batas ng 1987) is the supreme law of the Philippines — the charter drafted by the appointed Constitutional Commission of 1986, ratified in the plebiscite of February 2, 1987, and proclaimed in force by Proclamation No. 58 on February 11, 1987, replacing the Marcos-era 1973 Constitution after the EDSA People Power Revolution. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58) The Commission on Elections certified 16,622,111 affirmative votes (77.04 percent) against 4,953,375 negative (22.96 percent) from 21,785,216 votes cast, and the proclamation — the ratification record this wiki’s entry on the 1987 constitutional plebiscite documents — dated the charter’s effectivity to the February 2 vote itself. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58, Wikipedia — 1987 plebiscite)

The charter answers the 1973 Constitution it displaced provision by provision: it restores the presidential system with a checked executive, re-establishes the bicameral Congress of a 24-member Senate and a House of Representatives, imposes term limits headed by a single six-year presidential term with no reelection, writes the accountability rule that “public office is a public trust” into Article XI, reserves one-fifth of the House to a party-list system for under-represented sectors, and expands judicial power to reach any “grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction” in any branch of government — the reverse of the political-question deference that had let Javellana stand. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines) Despite repeated attempts from every succeeding administration, it has never been amended — the famous fact of Philippine constitutional law. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	Constitution of the Philippines (the article to which “1987 Constitution of the Philippines” redirects on English Wikipedia)
Wikidata	1987 Constitution of the Philippines (Q19054320)
DBpedia	Constitution_of_the_Philippines
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	Constitutions–Philippines
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	1987 Constitution Philippines Constitutional Commission 1986 ratification plebiscite party-list judicial review term limits Article XI accountability charter change
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Constitution of the Philippines — the formal title under which the charter is published and cited
1987 Philippine Constitution — the date-tagged styling in legal literature
Saligang Batas ng 1987 — the Filipino designation
Konstitusyon ng 1987 — the Filipino styling in common use
The Fifth Republic’s charter — its functional description, dating the constitutional order from February 1987

Examples and Analogies

A charter written against a dictator: the 1987 text works like a checklist of Marcos-era abuses, each with its counter-provision — decree power met by a Congress restored, the rubber-stamp Batasang Pambansa met by a bicameral legislature and term limits, Javellana‘s judicial helplessness met by expanded judicial review, and open-ended martial law met by a sixty-day limit Congress can revoke and the Supreme Court can review. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)
Presidential again, but fenced: where the 1935 Constitution created a strong presidency the 1973 charter then captured, the 1987 charter keeps the presidency but builds the fence — a single six-year term, no reelection, appointment powers routed through the Commission on Appointments and the Judicial and Bar Council, and independent civil-service bodies beyond the executive’s reach. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Verified charter data:
Drafting: Constitutional Commission of 1986 — 48 appointed members under the Freedom Constitution’s Article V, convened June 2, 1986 under president Cecilia Muñoz-Palma; draft approved October 12, 1986, presented to President Corazon Aquino October 15 (Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986)
Ratification: plebiscite February 2, 1987 — 16,622,111 yes (77.04 percent), 4,953,375 no (22.96 percent), 209,730 abstentions, 21,785,216 votes cast in 83,288 precincts; proclaimed in force by Proclamation No. 58, February 11, 1987 (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58, Wikipedia — 1987 plebiscite)
Structure: a preamble and eighteen articles, from the archipelagic national territory (Article I) through the Bill of Rights (III), the restored bicameral Congress (VI), the presidency (VII), the expanded judiciary (VIII), the constitutional commissions (IX), autonomous regions (X), accountability (XI), the economy (XII), social justice (XIII), education and language (XIV), the family (XV), and amendments (XVII) (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Term limits: President — six years, “not eligible for any re-election”; Vice-President — no more than two successive terms; Senators — six years, no more than two consecutive terms; Representatives — three years, no more than three consecutive terms (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Party-list: one-fifth of the House elected through a party-list system of registered national, regional, and sectoral parties, with labor, peasant, urban poor, indigenous-cultural-community, women, and youth seats designated for the first three Congresses (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Accountability: Article XI — “Public office is a public trust”; the Office of the Ombudsman; the Sandiganbayan retained in the charter’s scheme (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Judicial review: Article VIII, Section 1 — judicial power includes the duty “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” (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Martial law: Article VII, Section 18 — proclamation limited to sixty days when public safety requires it amid invasion or rebellion, report to Congress within forty-eight hours, revocation or extension by Congress voting jointly, and Supreme Court review on the factual sufficiency (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Death penalty: Article III, Section 19 — “Neither shall death penalty be imposed, unless, for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes, the Congress hereafter provides for it,” with existing death sentences reduced to reclusion perpetua (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Amendments since ratification: none — every attempt has failed (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

Usage Scenarios

1. Citing the Supreme Law

Every Philippine statute, treaty, proclamation, and local ordinance is tested against the 1987 text — the version of record published at LawPhil and the Supreme Court E-Library, and the starting point of every legal opinion in the Fifth Republic. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)

2. Teaching Constitutional Structure

Law and civics courses use the charter’s eighteen articles as the map of the restored presidential system — the checked executive, the bicameral Congress, the fiscal-autonomous constitutional commissions (Civil Service, COMELEC, Commission on Audit), the Judicial and Bar Council, and the Commission on Human Rights — the institutional architecture this wiki’s Constitution of the Philippines entry surveys. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

3. Litigating Against Grave Abuse of Discretion

Article VIII’s expansion is the daily tool of Philippine public law: certiorari now reaches acts of any branch or instrumentality that exceed jurisdiction — the doctrine that reopened questions Javellana-era deference had closed, as this wiki’s 1973 Constitution entry frames. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)

4. Prosecuting Official Corruption

Article XI — public office as a public trust, the Ombudsman, the ill-gotten-wealth architecture — supplies the constitutional basis of the modern accountability cases, from plunder prosecutions to asset-recovery litigation. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)

5. Studying Charter Change

Because the charter has never been amended, every constitutional-reform proposal since 1987 — constituent assembly, constitutional convention, or people’s initiative, each requiring ratification — is studied against the failed attempts and the Article XVII rules, the debate this wiki’s entries on the commission and the plebiscite frame. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

Strategies

Institutional redundancy as anti-dictatorship design: the drafters multiplied the checks — Congress, the commissions, the JBC, the Ombudsman, expanded judicial review, term limits — so that no single capture could reproduce 1972; the strategy critics answer with the phrase “gridlock by design.” (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Ratification as legitimacy: the appointed commission’s draft went to a nationwide secret-ballot plebiscite within the Freedom Constitution’s sixty-day clock, converting a revolutionary document into a popularly ratified one — the two-step this wiki’s Freedom Constitution and plebiscite entries document. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — 1987 plebiscite)
Entrench the sectors: the party-list reservation wrote under-represented sectors into the legislature’s composition itself, a standing quota no ordinary statute could quietly remove. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Answer the ratification fraud of 1973: where the 1973 charter was “ratified” by viva voce citizens’ assemblies, the 1987 ratification ran through audited precincts and a COMELEC certificate of canvass — the procedural contrast this wiki’s 1973 Constitution entry draws. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)
For researchers: date the charter carefully — ratified February 2, 1987, proclaimed in force February 11 by Proclamation No. 58 with effectivity to the ratification date — the convention this wiki’s family of 1987-transition entries follows. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)

Security and Safety Measures

The martial-law brakes: Article VII’s sixty-day ceiling, the forty-eight-hour report to Congress, revocation by majority of both houses voting jointly, and mandatory Supreme Court review are the charter’s core safeguard against a repeat of Proclamation No. 1081’s open-ended rule. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Rights restored and enlarged: the Article III Bill of Rights — with the writ of habeas data and privacy protections, and the suspension-of-the-writ clauses tightened to actual invasion or rebellion — keeps the dictatorship’s emergency toolkit unavailable in fact as well as in name. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
Civilianized security forces: the charter subordinates the Armed Forces and the police to civilian authority, insulates the civil service, and creates the Commission on Human Rights to investigate violations by state agents. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution)
For researchers: amendment claims circulate periodically — as of this entry’s verification the charter remains unamended, and the only nationwide constitutional plebiscite of the Fifth Republic remains that of February 2, 1987; check the current record before repeating the famous fact. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — 1987 plebiscite)

Historical Context

The charter was born in the eleven months between two proclamations. President Corazon Aquino, installed by the February 1986 revolution, chose a provisional Freedom Constitution (Proclamation No. 3, March 25, 1986) over restoring the 1935 or reforming the 1973 charter, and its Article V commanded a 30-to-50-member commission of “recognized probity” to draft a permanent one. The 48 commissioners — former justices, legislators, a bishop’s counsel, labor and peasant leaders, and the film director Lino Brocka, who resigned that August — convened under Cecilia Muñoz-Palma on June 2, 1986, fought over the form of government, the death penalty, the U.S. bases, and economic policy, approved their draft on October 12, and presented it on October 15. On February 2, 1987, the electorate ratified it by better than three to one, and Proclamation No. 58 proclaimed it in force on February 11 — the sequence this wiki’s entries on the Freedom Constitution, the commission, and the plebiscite document in full. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)

The charter has governed every Philippine administration since, unamended. The amendment attempts form their own chronicle: a 1995 draft exposed before completion; the 1997 PIRMA people’s initiative stopped by the Supreme Court for want of an enabling law; the Estrada-era study commission; the Arroyo-era constituent-assembly drive rejected by the Court; the Belmonte economic-liberalization resolutions; President Duterte’s Executive Order No. 10 of December 7, 2016 creating a consultative committee for federalism; and the post-2023 House push for a people’s initiative aimed at economic provisions — each failing against the charter’s demanding Article XVII rules and the public’s protective memory of why it was written. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

Challenges and Controversies

Never Amended: Endurance or Rigidity?

That the charter has never been amended in almost four decades is defended as the stability of a document ratified by 77 percent of voters, and attacked as rigidity — Article XVII’s requirements, critics argue, make even consensual economic updates nearly impossible, pushing reform into statutory work-arounds and periodic boom-and-bust charter-change politics. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

The Revolutionary Origin

The drafting commission was appointed by a revolutionary president under a provisional charter issued by decree, and ratified under the interim order’s own authority — the provenance objection this wiki’s plebiscite entry records, answered by defenders with the public sessions, the sectoral membership, and the supermajority ratification. (Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986, Wikipedia — 1987 plebiscite)

The Judicialization of Politics

Article VIII’s grave-abuse-of-discretion clause reversed Javellana but opened the courts to nearly every political dispute — celebrated as the restoration of judicial courage, criticized as the Supreme Court’s standing invitation to decide what the political branches cannot, the double-edged legacy of the drafters’ answer to 1973. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

The Party-list Experiment

The party-list reservation — designed for labor, peasants, and the marginalized — has been occupied over the years by well-funded sectoral fronts and dynastic vehicles, an implementation gap between the article’s social justice purpose and the Commission on Elections’ interpretations, the standing critique of the charter’s most innovative electoral device. (LawPhil — 1987 Constitution, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)