People v. Ferrer, G.R. Nos. L-32613-14 December 27, 1972

SEDITIOUS SPEECH

People v. Ferrer, G.R. Nos. L-32613-14 December 27, 1972

[T]he [Anti-Subversion] Act is aimed against conspiracies to overthrow the Government by force, violence or other illegal means. Whatever interest in freedom of speech and freedom of association is infringed by the prohibition against knowing membership in the Communist Party of the Philippines, is so indirect and so insubstantial as to be clearly and heavily outweighed by the overriding considerations of national security and the preservation of democratic institutions in his country.

The membership clause of the U.S. Federal Smith Actis similar in many respects to the membership provision ofthe Anti-Subversion Act. The former provides:

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize anysociety, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, orencourage the overthrow or destruction of any such governmentby force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliatedwith, any such society, group or assembly of persons, knowingthe purpose thereof —

Shall be fined not more than $20,000 or imprisoned notmore than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for emplymentby the United States or any department or agencythereof, for the five years next following his conviction....

In sustaining the validity of this provision, the "Court said in Scales vs. United States:

It was settled in Dennis that advocacy with which we are here concerned is not constitutionally protected speech, and it was further established that a combination to promote such advocacy, albeit under the aegis of what purports to be a political party, is not such association as is protected by the first Amendment. We can discern no reason why membership, when it constitutes a purposeful form of complicity in a group engaging in this same forbidden advocacy, should receive any greater degree of protection from the guarantees of that Amendment.

Moreover, as was held in another case, where the problems of accommodating the exigencies of self-preservation and the values of liberty are as complex and intricate as in the situation described in the legislative findings stated in the U.S. Federal Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950,the legislative judgment as to how that threat may best be met consistently with the safeguards of personal freedoms is not to be set aside merely because the judgment of judges would, in the first instance, have chosen other methods. For in truth, legislation, "whether it restrains freedom to hire or freedom to speak, is itself an effort at compromise between the claims of the social order and individual freedom, and when the legislative compromise in either case is brought to the judicial test the court stands one step removed from the conflict and its resolution through law."

FERNANDO, J., dissenting:

The line is to be drawn, however, where the wordsamount to an incitement to commit the crime of seditionor rebellion. The state has been reached, to follow theformulation of Cardozo, where thought merges into action.Thus is loyalty shown to the freedom of speech or pressordained by the Constitution. It does not bar the expressionof views affecting the very life of the state, even ifopposed to its fundamental presuppositions. It allows, if it does not require as a matter of fact, that unorthodox ideas be freely ventilated and fully heard. Dissent is not disloyalty.

Such an approach is reinforced by the well-settled constitutional principle "that even though the governmental purposes be legitimate and substantial, they cannot be pursued by means that broadly stifle fundamental personal liberties when the end can be more narrowly achieved. For precision of regulation is the touchstone in an area so closely related to our most precious freedoms." This is so for "a governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms." ²⁵ It is indispensable then that "an over breadth" in the applicability of the statute be avoided. If such be the case, then the line dividing the valid from the constitutionally infirm has been crossed. That for me is the conclusion to be drawn from the wording of the Anti-Subversion Act.