CABANSAG v. FERNANDEZ, G.R. No. 8974, October 18, 1957.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND LIBEL AND CONTEMPT LAWS CABANSAG v. FERNANDEZ, G.R. No. 8974, October 18, 1957. Cabansag filed a suit to eject Fernandez from a certain parcel of land. The trial of the case however, was unduly prolonged, prompting Cabansag to write a letter to the Presidential Complainants and Action Commission (PCAC). For this, he and his lawyers were held in contempt of court. We are therefore confronted with a clash of two fundamental rights which lie at the bottom of our democratic institutions — the independence of the judiciary and the right to petition the government for redress of grievance. How to balance and reconcile the exercise of these rights is the problem posed in the case before us. ". . . A free press is not to be preferred to an independent judiciary, nor an independent judiciary to a free press. Neither has primacy over the other; both are indispensable to a free society. The freedom of the press in itself presupposes an independent judiciary t...

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