Analysis of Philippine High Court decisions on free speech, religious freedom and environmental rights reveals court’s role in transjudicial dialogue

30 Jan 2025

UP Diliman

This paper explores the causes of transjudicial conversation phenomenon on human rights norms in the context of the Philippine Supreme Court. Transjudicial conversation refers to a judicial occurrence where a domestic court cross-cites foreign judicial opinions. Analysis of the decisions delivered by the Philippine High Court from 1987 to 2019 on issues involving free speech, religious freedom, and environmental rights revealed that the court is an interlocutor in the transjudicial conversation phenomenon. The examination of these cases alongside relevant literature showed that the motivations behind this engagement might be attributed to the genealogical linkages between the domestic rights guarantees and their foreign counterparts, the historical-political alliances between the interlocutor courts, the constitutional system of the borrowing courts, and the foreign academic trainings of the judge who pens the decision.

The paper aids in understanding the phenomenon of transjudicial conversation involving various human rights norms in the context of the Philippine Supreme Court. Because of its significance in the development of rights norms, the causes of such phenomenon must be documented and analyzed, especially in the Philippines where no study on this matter has yet been undertaken (Hirschl, 2014). In so doing, an understanding of this occurrence will provide a better outlook for human rights lawyers and civil society organizations in their court advocacies, specifically in their work in promoting and protecting rights using legal mechanisms. Similarly, this will provide a guidepost for future scholars who wish to study similar or related subjects thereby enriching the body of knowledge concerning the relationships between the transjudicial conversation and the development of domestic human rights norms.

Authors: James Gregory Alcaraz Villasis (University of the Philippines Diliman), Naparat Kranrattanasuit (Mahidol University), and Purwo Santoso (Universitas Gadjah Mada)

Read the full paper: https://www.dlsu.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/pdf/research/journals/apssr/2024-march-vol24-1/ra8.pdf

Image by Arek Socha fron Pixabay

Analysis of Philippine High Court decisions on free speech, religious freedom and environmental rights reveals court’s role in transjudicial dialogue

This paper explores the causes of transjudicial conversation phenomenon on human rights norms in the context of the Philippine Supreme Court. Transjudicial conversation refers to a judicial occurrence where a domestic court cross-cites foreign judicial opinions. Analysis of the decisions delivered by the Philippine High Court from 1987 to 2019 on issues involving free speech, religious freedom, and environmental rights revealed that the court is an interlocutor in the transjudicial conversation phenomenon. The examination of these cases alongside relevant literature showed that the motivations behind this engagement might be attributed to the genealogical linkages between the domestic rights guarantees and their foreign counterparts, the historical-political alliances between the interlocutor courts, the constitutional system of the borrowing courts, and the foreign academic trainings of the judge who pens the decision.

The paper aids in understanding the phenomenon of transjudicial conversation involving various human rights norms in the context of the Philippine Supreme Court. Because of its significance in the development of rights norms, the causes of such phenomenon must be documented and analyzed, especially in the Philippines where no study on this matter has yet been undertaken (Hirschl, 2014). In so doing, an understanding of this occurrence will provide a better outlook for human rights lawyers and civil society organizations in their court advocacies, specifically in their work in promoting and protecting rights using legal mechanisms. Similarly, this will provide a guidepost for future scholars who wish to study similar or related subjects thereby enriching the body of knowledge concerning the relationships between the transjudicial conversation and the development of domestic human rights norms.

Authors: James Gregory Alcaraz Villasis (University of the Philippines Diliman), Naparat Kranrattanasuit (Mahidol University), and Purwo Santoso (Universitas Gadjah Mada)

Read the full paper: https://www.dlsu.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/pdf/research/journals/apssr/2024-march-vol24-1/ra8.pdf

Image by Arek Socha fron Pixabay