1935 Constitution of the Philippines

Also known as: Commonwealth Constitution · 1935 Charter · Saligang Batas ng 1935 · Constitution of the Commonwealth of the Philippines

Government

Definition

The 1935 Constitution of the Philippines is the charter that established the Commonwealth of the Philippines and went on to govern the independent Republic until 1973. Drafted under the machinery of the Tydings–McDuffie Act — which this wiki’s entry on that statute documents — it was written by a constitutional convention elected on July 10, 1934, when voters returned 202 nonpartisan delegates, and convened in Manila on July 30, 1934. The convention approved its draft on February 8, 1935, won the approval of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington on March 25, 1935, and was ratified in the plebiscite of May 14, 1935 by 1,213,046 votes (96.43 percent) against 44,963. It took effect with the Commonwealth’s inauguration on November 15, 1935 and remained the fundamental law — through war, exile, liberation, and independence — until the 1973 Constitution superseded it on January 17, 1973. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — 1934 Philippine Constitutional Convention election, Wikipedia — 1935 Philippine constitutional plebiscite, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines)

As originally adopted, the charter established a presidential system with a unicameral National Assembly and a president elected to a single six-year term without re-election — unicameralism was an original feature of the 1935 text, not, as is sometimes stated, the product of a 1937 amendment. The 1940 amendments — ratified in the plebiscite of June 18, 1940 and approved by President Roosevelt on December 2, 1940 — restored a bicameral Congress of a twenty-four-member Senate and a House of Representatives, shortened the presidential term to four years with a maximum of two consecutive terms, and created an independent Commission on Elections. The citizenship provisions of Article IV were left untouched by the 1940 changes; the charter’s only other amendment was the parity ordinance of 1947, ratified on March 11, 1947, which opened the exploitation of natural resources to United States citizens — the constitutional concession this wiki’s entry on the Bell Trade Act examines. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	Constitution of the Philippines
Wikidata	1935 Constitution of the Philippines (Q19054297)
DBpedia	1935_Constitution_of_the_Philippines
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	1935 Constitution Commonwealth Philippines 1940 amendments bicameral Congress unicameral National Assembly parity amendment 1947
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Commonwealth Constitution
1935 Charter
Saligang Batas ng 1935
Constitution of the Commonwealth of the Philippines

Examples and Analogies

A charter with two careers: the 1935 Constitution was written for a ten-year apprenticeship but built to outlive it — it founded the Commonwealth in 1935, survived occupation and exile, and then served the sovereign Third Republic for another generation, the continuity this wiki’s entry on the Constitution of the Philippines traces. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)
A diploma requiring two signatures: under the Tydings–McDuffie framework the charter needed both Filipino ratification and the American President’s approval before it could take effect — constitution-making as supervised sovereignty, the design feature constitutional historians weigh against the convention’s genuine deliberative record. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — Commonwealth of the Philippines)
The amendment record as seismograph: each of the charter’s amendments registers a pressure point — the 1940 amendments adjusted institutions after five years of unicameral practice, the 1947 parity ordinance bent Article XIII to the economic terms of independence, and the contested rewriting of 1971–1973 registered the crisis of the Marcos second term. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines)

Usage Scenarios

1. Governing the Commonwealth Transition

The charter organized the Commonwealth that took office on November 15, 1935 — a Filipino president, a Filipino legislature, and an American responsibility for foreign affairs and defense — and supplied the legal basis for the National Defense Act and the transition institutions this wiki’s entry on the Commonwealth of the Philippines documents. (Wikipedia — Commonwealth of the Philippines)

2. Carrying the Republic, 1946–1972

After independence on July 4, 1946, the same charter — as amended in 1940 — structured the Third Republic: a bicameral Congress, a four-year presidential term, and a Supreme Court exercising judicial review, the framework under which every Third Republic president from Manuel Roxas to Ferdinand Marcos took office. (LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines)

3. Amending the Charter

The 1940 amendments illustrate the charter’s own amendment machinery in operation: the National Assembly proposed Resolution No. 38 on September 15, 1939, the electorate ratified it on June 18, 1940, and presidential approval in Washington followed on December 2, 1940 — the sequence this wiki’s entry on the National Assembly of the Philippines records. The 1947 parity amendment ran the same course under the amended procedure. (LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

4. Teaching the 1972 Constitutional Crisis

Legal historians use the charter’s fate under martial law — suspension in practice in September 1972, formal supersession on January 17, 1973 — to examine how a constitution’s guarantees depend on the institutions sworn to defend them, the episode this wiki’s entry on Martial Law in the Philippines documents. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

Strategies

Design for the transition, not the destination: the drafters wrote for a Commonwealth under American oversight — the presidential approval requirement, the deference to United States authority in matters of foreign affairs — while building institutions durable enough to govern a sovereign republic afterward. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)
Amendment as safety valve: rather than a second convention, the Commonwealth used the charter’s amendment article to correct the unicameral legislature and the single six-year term after experience exposed their weaknesses — institutional repair by plebiscite. (LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines)
Importing doctrine, adapting text: the framers drew mainly on the United States Constitution, with traces of the Malolos charter and other foreign models, but adapted the separation of powers to a unicameral legislature — the synthesis scholars treat as the charter’s distinctive craft. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

Security and Safety Measures

A martial-law clause without circuit breakers: the charter empowered the president, as commander-in-chief, to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and place the country under martial law in case of invasion, insurrection, or rebellion — the terse grant that President Marcos invoked in 1972 and whose inadequacy the 1987 Constitution’s time limits and review mechanisms were designed to correct. (LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — Martial Law in the Philippines)
Judicial review as guardian: the charter vested judicial power in a Supreme Court with the authority to test official action against the fundamental law — the power under which the peacetime Court reviewed the parity controversies and later the constitutional crises of the early 1970s. (LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines)
An independent electoral machinery: the 1940 amendments created the Commission on Elections to insulate the vote from the executive — the institutional lesson drawn from the contested elections of the Commonwealth’s first years. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)
For researchers: two date conventions recur — the first national election is given as September 16 or 17, 1935 depending on the source, and the 1972 martial-law proclamation is dated September 21 but was announced on September 23 — verify against the primary record before citing. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — Martial Law in the Philippines)

Historical Context

The charter emerged from the timetable Congress fixed in the Tydings–McDuffie Act of March 24, 1934: a constitution to be drafted and ratified, a Commonwealth to be inaugurated, and independence to follow ten years later. The convention election of July 10, 1934 returned 202 delegates on a nonpartisan ballot; the convention convened on July 30, 1934 and approved its draft on February 8, 1935; President Roosevelt approved it on March 25; and the electorate ratified it on May 14, 1935. The charter took effect with the Commonwealth’s inauguration on November 15, 1935, following the first national election of September 1935 — the sequence this wiki’s entries on the Tydings–McDuffie Act and the Commonwealth document. Under its original text a unicameral National Assembly legislated, the president served one six-year term, and a plebiscite held in 1937 under the charter’s own mechanism extended suffrage to women. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — 1934 Philippine Constitutional Convention election, Wikipedia — Commonwealth of the Philippines)

The war years bent but did not break the charter: it followed the Commonwealth government into exile in Washington, while the Japanese-sponsored Second Republic of Jose P. Laurel operated under its own 1943 charter. Restored in 1945, the Commonwealth completed the schedule — the 1946 elections and independence on July 4, 1946 — whereupon the 1935 Constitution, twice amended, became the fundamental law of the sovereign Republic. The 1940 amendments had already restored the bicameral Congress and the four-year presidential term; the parity amendment of March 11, 1947 adjusted Article XIII to the Bell Trade Act’s requirements. A constitutional convention elected in 1971 to write a new charter was discredited by bribery controversies before it could finish its work, and on the evening of September 23, 1972 President Marcos announced Proclamation No. 1081 — dated September 21 — placing the country under martial law and suspending the constitutional order. The 1973 Constitution was proclaimed ratified on January 17, 1973, formally ending the 1935 charter’s thirty-eight-year career. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — Martial Law in the Philippines)

Challenges and Controversies

The Unicameral Experiment and the 1940 Restoration

The convention’s decision to abolish the Senate inherited from the Philippine Legislature and legislate through a single chamber proved short-lived: by 1939 the Commonwealth’s own leadership had concluded that the unicameral National Assembly concentrated too much power, and Resolution No. 38 set the 1940 restoration of the Senate in motion. Historians still debate whether the unicameral design was a principled adaptation or a device for consolidating Nacionalista control — the sole flirtation with unicameralism in the country’s democratic constitutional history. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines)

Supervised Sovereignty

The requirement that the Filipino draft pass presidential approval in Washington before ratification has drawn the lasting critique that the charter was framed under an American veto — including the reported pressure behind the economic provisions that later had to be amended to satisfy the Bell Trade Act. Defenders answer that the convention deliberated freely within that constraint; the tension between the two readings frames the scholarship on the charter’s legitimacy. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

The Parity Amendment of 1947

The single postwar amendment — granting United States citizens rights equal to those of Filipinos in the exploitation of natural resources — reached the required three-fourths of Congress only after six Democratic Alliance and three Nacionalista legislators were denied their seats, a parliamentary maneuver upheld by the Supreme Court and still weighed against the amendment’s legitimacy, as this wiki’s entry on the Bell Trade Act records. The plebiscite of March 11, 1947 approved parity on a turnout of roughly 40 percent. (LawPhil — 1935 Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

The 1972 Suspension and Supersession

Whether the charter’s martial-law clause was abused or merely used as written remains the central question of its final year: critics read Proclamation No. 1081 as the instrument by which a president barred by the two-term limit extended his rule, while the formal transition to the 1973 Constitution — proclaimed ratified on January 17, 1973 through citizens’ assemblies rather than the charter’s own amendment procedure — is treated by scholars as a contested supersession, the rupture this wiki’s entries on Martial Law in the Philippines and on the Constitution of the Philippines examine. (Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines, Wikipedia — Martial Law in the Philippines)