act-no-4007 – Wiki Philippines

Definition

Act No. 4007 is the statute of the Philippine Legislature long-titled “AN ACT TO REORGANIZE THE DEPARTMENTS, BUREAUS AND OFFICES OF THE INSULAR GOVERNMENT, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES,” approved December 5, 1932 and carrying its own short title in Section 1: “The Reorganization Law of 1932.” (LawPhil — Act 4007) The act took effect January 1, 1933 — Section 45 allowing the Governor-General, with the Council of State’s approval, to postpone particular provisions to July 31, 1933, “except those contained in sections two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine” — and its method was amendment of the Revised Administrative Code rather than legislation from scratch. Section 2 rewrote the Code’s departmental article to fix six executive departments: Finance, Public Instruction, Justice, Agriculture and Commerce, Public Works and Communications, and the Interior and Labor. (LawPhil — Act 4007)

For the agriculture line this wiki’s cluster traces, the operative change was the renaming of the department Act 2666 had created: Section 36 provided that the powers, duties, and functions “heretofore entrusted to the department or Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Department or Secretary of Commerce and Communications, and the Department or Secretary of the Interior, shall be understood to be transferred, respectively, to the Department of Agriculture and Commerce, the Department of Public Works and Communications, and the Department of the Interior and Labor” — the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR) of 1917 becoming the Department of Agriculture and Commerce from January 1, 1933. (LawPhil — Act 4007, LawPhil — Act 2666) Section 7 settled the renamed department’s estate — “executive supervision over the Bureau of Plant Industry, the Bureau of Animal Industry, the Bureau of Forestry, the Bureau of Lands, the Bureau of Science, the Bureau of Commerce, the Weather Bureau,” plus colonies and plantations and hunting, fisheries, sponges, and other sea products — the two specialist bureaus of Act 3639’s 1929 split sitting beside a new Bureau of Commerce built by Section 29 out of the old Bureau of Commerce and Industry “created by Act Numbered Twenty-seven hundred and twenty-eight.” (LawPhil — Act 4007, LawPhil — Act 3639) The name stood until Executive Order No. 94 (October 4, 1947) provided that the “present Department of Agriculture and Commerce shall hereafter be known as Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources,” effective as of July 1, 1947. (LawPhil — EO 94, Wikipedia — Secretary of Agriculture)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article (searches on “Act 4007 Philippines” and “Reorganization Law of 1932” verified empty this session)
Wikidata	N/A — entity search returns no item (verified this session)
DBpedia	N/A — the data endpoint returns an empty resource for Act_No._4007 (verified this session)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	reorganization (noun — “The act or process of rearranging”; the operation the act’s short title names) (Wiktionary — reorganization)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	Executive departments (sh85046283) — the subject class of the act’s reorganization; no act-specific heading verified (verified this session via id.loc.gov suggest) (LCSH — Executive departments)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	agriculture (c_203) — the field of the renamed department’s portfolio; no act-specific concept verified (label verified this session) (AGROVOC — agriculture)
Google Scholar	Act No. 4007 Reorganization Law of 1932 December 5 1932 Philippine Legislature Insular Government departments bureaus Agriculture and Commerce Bureau of Plant Industry Bureau of Animal Industry Bureau of Commerce Act 2728 National Museum Fiber Standardization Board Section 41 vacate reappoint Revised Administrative Code DANR renaming 1933
ConceptNet	N/A (ConceptNet API unreachable this session — HTTP 502)
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

The Reorganization Law of 1932 — the statutory short title fixed by Section 1
Act No. 4007 (1932) — the number-and-year styling of this wiki’s cluster entries
The 1932 reorganization act — the genealogical shorthand of the departmental lineage

Examples and Analogies

A cabinet renamed by revision: the act did not abolish the old departments; it rewrote the Revised Administrative Code’s departmental articles so that six departments, three of them under new names, read as the Code’s own text — reorganization by redline, not demolition. (LawPhil — Act 4007)
The generalist’s estate divided among specialists: the old Commerce and Communications department lost its commerce half to Agriculture’s new name and kept works, posts, water, surveys, and aeronautics as Public Works and Communications; the Interior absorbed labor — each portfolio rewritten in the Code’s bureau lists. (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Verified statutory data:
Approval and effectivity: approved December 5, 1932; effective January 1, 1933; postponable to July 31, 1933 except Sections 2–9 (Sec. 45) (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Short title (Sec. 1): “The Reorganization Law of 1932” (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Departments (Sec. 2): Finance; Public Instruction; Justice; Agriculture and Commerce; Public Works and Communications; the Interior and Labor (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Agriculture and Commerce portfolio (Sec. 7): Bureaus of Plant Industry, Animal Industry, Forestry, Lands, Science, and Commerce, the Weather Bureau, colonies and plantations, hunting, fisheries, sponges, and other sea products, including licensing (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Bureau of Commerce (Sec. 29): the Bureau of Commerce and Industry of Act No. 2728, except the marine railway and repair shops, “shall hereafter be known as the Bureau of Commerce” (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Abolitions: the National Museum of the Philippine Islands as a separate bureau, its history and fine-arts divisions to the National Library and the rest to the Bureau of Science (Sec. 30); the Fiber Standardization Board, its duties to the department itself (Sec. 31) (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Transfers (Sec. 36): DANR powers to Agriculture and Commerce; Commerce and Communications to Public Works and Communications; Interior to the Interior and Labor (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Personnel reset (Secs. 41–42): Secretaries, judges, and bureau chiefs vacated their positions for reappointment by the Governor-General with Senate consent; separated employees received gratuity protection, civil-service eligibility, and “preference in the appointment” (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Department line: DANR created by Act 2666 (November 18, 1916); bureaus split by Act 3639 (December 7, 1929); renamed Agriculture and Commerce from January 1, 1933 — Rafael Alunan Sr.’s DANR secretaryship ending that day, Vicente Singson Encarnacion the first Secretary of Agriculture and Commerce; DANR restored by EO 94 (1947) (LawPhil — Act 2666, LawPhil — Act 3639, Wikipedia — Secretary of Agriculture, LawPhil — EO 94)

Usage Scenarios

1. Dating the Agriculture and Commerce Era

Researchers cite this act whenever a bureau, officer, or issuance belongs to the “Department of Agriculture and Commerce” years — January 1, 1933 to July 1, 1947 — the interval fixed by the act’s effectivity and by EO 94’s restoration of the DANR name. (LawPhil — Act 4007, LawPhil — EO 94)

2. Fixing Bureau Assignments on the Eve of the Commonwealth

Which department supervised which bureau in 1933 resolves to Sections 4 through 9 — the Code’s amended bureau lists, quoted by Section rather than paraphrased, with the agriculture department’s seven bureaus and the sea’s products enumerated in Section 7. (LawPhil — Act 4007)

3. Tracing the Commerce Bureau Lineage

The Bureau of Commerce begins at Section 29 — the Bureau of Commerce and Industry of Act 2728 stripped of its marine railway shops and renamed — the statutory hinge between the Insular commerce service and the trade offices of later decades. (LawPhil — Act 4007)

4. Studying Colonial Reorganization Technique

The act is the era’s specimen of wholesale administrative surgery: amend the Code article by article, abolish two bodies outright, vacate every senior office by statute, and reappoint through the Senate — continuity of function, reset of tenure. (LawPhil — Act 4007)

Strategies

Amend the code, don’t replace it: by rewriting the Revised Administrative Code’s departmental and bureau articles, the act kept the whole administrative law in one book — every subsequent statute citing “Section 84 of the Revised Administrative Code” saw this act’s text. (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Rename the department to fit its new cargo: the commerce half of the old Commerce and Communications portfolio moved to Agriculture’s department, so the name changed to match — “Agriculture and Commerce” describing exactly what Sections 7 and 36 put inside it. (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Vacate and reappoint: Section 41’s mass vacation of offices, with Senate-confirmed reappointment under the new structure, let the Governor-General rebuild every department’s leadership in one operation while Section 42 protected the separated. (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Protect the examined professions: Section 10 kept the examination laws of the professional boards in force — reorganization without disruption of the license system. (LawPhil — Act 4007)

Security and Safety Measures

Senate consent on reappointment: the post-vacation appointments of Secretaries and bureau chiefs required the Philippine Senate’s consent — the legislative check written into the personnel reset. (LawPhil — Act 4007)
A safety net for the separated: Section 42’s gratuity, civil-service eligibility preservation, and reappointment preference for employees separated by the reorganization — the 1932 ancestor of the separation-pay formulas this wiki’s postwar cluster entries carry. (LawPhil — Act 4007)
Funds swept, not stranded: Sections 39 and 40 reverted unneeded funds to surplus and merged the funds and properties of transferred offices — the accounting discipline that kept the reorganization from leaving orphaned appropriations. (LawPhil — Act 4007)
For researchers: cite the department by period — DANR to December 31, 1932; Agriculture and Commerce from January 1, 1933; DANR again from July 1, 1947 — and date the renaming to the act’s effectivity, not to its December 5, 1932 approval alone; Section 45’s postponement power never touched the departmental sections. (LawPhil — Act 4007, LawPhil — EO 94)

Historical Context

The act closed the American colonial period’s last great reorganization season. The executive the Jones Law era had built — six departments under Act 2666 of November 18, 1916, the DANR among them — had been refined once already by Act 3639 of December 7, 1929, which split the Bureau of Agriculture into the Bureaus of Animal Industry and Plant Industry. (LawPhil — Act 2666, LawPhil — Act 3639) Act 4007, approved December 5, 1932, rewrote the whole map on the eve of the Commonwealth: the DANR became Agriculture and Commerce from January 1, 1933 under its first secretary of that title, Vicente Singson Encarnacion, with the plant and animal bureaus of the 1929 split, the science and weather services, the lands and forests, and a renamed Bureau of Commerce all under one secretary. (LawPhil — Act 4007, Wikipedia — Secretary of Agriculture)

The renamed department carried the agriculture portfolio through the Commonwealth and the war — the 1932 renaming was an administrative, not a political, break — and in 1947 the restored Republic reversed the name by order: EO 94 of October 4, 1947 provided that the “present Department of Agriculture and Commerce shall hereafter be known as Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources,” effective July 1, 1947, the second DANR this wiki’s departmental entry documents through the 1974 split by Presidential Decree No. 461. (LawPhil — EO 94, Wikipedia — Secretary of Agriculture)

Challenges and Controversies

The Title That Is Not About Agriculture

The act is sometimes introduced as a Bureau of Agriculture measure — a premise checked and rejected this session: the long title is the generic “AN ACT TO REORGANIZE THE DEPARTMENTS, BUREAUS AND OFFICES OF THE INSULAR GOVERNMENT, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES,” and the Bureau of Agriculture appears nowhere in it, having ended by Act 3639’s split three years before. The act’s agriculture content is the department’s renaming and portfolio, Sections 36 and 7. (LawPhil — Act 4007, LawPhil — Act 3639)

Renaming or Reconstituting?

Secondary accounts say the act “renamed” the DANR; the statute’s own language is Section 36’s “understood to be transferred” — powers read onto the new department and its secretary. Both describe one operation: the departmental line continuous, its name and half its portfolio changed; quotations should follow Section 36’s wording. (LawPhil — Act 4007)

The Commonwealth Follow-On That Is Not CA 616

A drafting premise dating the department’s next reorganization to “CA 616” does not verify: Commonwealth Act No. 616 (June 4, 1941) is the Espionage Act, “An Act to Punish Espionage and Other Offenses Against the National Security.” No Commonwealth amendment of the department structure was verified this session; the next verified instrument in the department’s line is EO 94 of 1947. (LawPhil — Act 4007, LawPhil — EO 94)

Two Dates, One Act

Approval (December 5, 1932), effectivity (January 1, 1933), and the possible postponement to July 31, 1933 answer three different questions; the departmental renaming took effect January 1, 1933 because Sections 2–9 were exempt from postponement. Citations should say which clock they mean. (LawPhil — Act 4007)

Tag: act-no-4007

Act No. 4007