Calalang v Williams (Labor Standards)

Calalang v Williams 

GR No. 47800 

December 2, 1940  

FACTS:    

Pursuant to the power delegated to it by the Legislature, the Director of Public Works promulgated rules and regulations pertaining to the closure of Rosario Street and Rizal Avenue to traffic of 

animal-drawn vehicles for a year from the date of the opening of the Colgante Bridge to traffic.   

Among others, the petitioner Calalang, concerned citizen, aver that the rules and regulations complained of:  

 infringe upon constitutional precept on the promotion of social justice to insure the well being and economic security of all people; 

 and that it constitutes unlawful interference with legitimate business or trade and abridge the right to personal liberty and freedom of locomotion.  

ISSUE:  Whether or not the rules and regulation promote social justice.  

HELD:  

YES, it still promotes social justice. In enacting the said law, the National Assembly was prompted by considerations of public convenience and welfare.  

The promotion of Social Justice is to be adhered not through a mistaken sympathy towards any given group (e.g. the poor - because social justice is bringing the greatest good to the greatest number, not necessarily just the poor like the drivers of the animal-drawn vehicles).  

Social justice:   

: "neither communism, nor despotism, nor atomism, nor anarchy," but the humanization of laws and the equalization of social and economic force by the State so that justice in its rational and objectively secular conception may at least be approximated.      

: the promotion of the welfare of all the people, the adoption by the Government of measures calculated to insure economic stability of all the competent elements of society, through the maintenance of a proper economic and social equilibrium in the interrelations of the members of the     community, constitutionally, through the adoption of measures legally justifiable, or extra-constitutionally, through the exercise of powers underlying the existence of all governments on the time-honored principle of salus populi est suprema lex.      

: must be founded on the recognition of the necessity of interdependence among divers and diverse units of a society and of the protection that should be equally and evenly extended to all groups as a combined force in our social and economic life, consistent with the fundamental and paramount     objective of the state of promoting the health, comfort and quiet of all persons, and of bringing about "the greatest good to the greatest number."  

RATIO: 

(1) Liberty is a blessing without which life is a misery, but liberty should not be made to prevail over authority because then society will fall into anarchy.  

(2)The citizen should achieve the required balance of liberty and authority in his mind through education and personal discipline so that there may be established the resultant equilibrium, which means peace and order and happiness of all.