The constitutional structure: how the three departments and the commissions fit

Most political law questions are one question in disguise: who has the power, and on what conditions? The Constitution answers it structurally — legislative, executive, judicial, plus independent commissions — and every doctrine candidates memorise is a consequence of that structure.

This article is the map. It is not a substitute for the text; it is the frame you hang the text on.

Separation of powers, and what it actually forbids

The doctrine has two halves, and candidates routinely learn only the first.

• No department may exercise a power belonging to another. The legislature cannot adjudicate; the executive cannot legislate; the courts cannot command the armed forces.
• Each department is supreme within its own sphere, which is why the Court will not review the wisdom of legislation, and why Congress cannot reverse a final judgment by statute.

What it does not forbid is the ordinary machinery of government: delegation, overlap, and the sharing of functions. That is the second concept.

Checks and balances: the enumerated ones matter

Questions about checks and balances are usually questions about a specific mechanism, and the syllabus expects the specific mechanism. Learn them as a list with the actor and the condition:

• The President's veto, and the congressional override with its required majority.
• Confirmation of appointments by the Commission on Appointments, for the appointments to which it applies.
• The Court's power to declare a law or act unconstitutional.
• Congress's power to define and punish contempt within its own proceedings; its power to impeach; the Court's role in impeachment trials as the Constitution assigns it.
• The Ombudsman's and the commissions' independence, and the removal conditions that protect them.

For each, the examinable content is: who acts, on what ground, with what majority, and what follows. An answer that says "checks and balances operate" has said nothing.

Delegation of powers: the two tests

Delegation is the concept that generates the most questions in the basic-concepts block, because almost every administrative statute delegates something.

The framework to know:

1. The completeness test. The law must be complete in itself — it must set out the policy, the means, and the limits, so that the delegate has a framework rather than a licence.
2. The sufficient-standard test. If the law leaves a detail to the delegate, the law must fix a standard — a guide, a boundary, a condition — by which the exercise can be checked.
3. Permissible delegation to the local level. Local governments exercise powers the Constitution and the Local Government Code assign, which is a different analysis from a delegation of national power.

The examiner's question is generally: is the delegation valid, and why? — which is answered by pointing to the standard in the text and applying it.

The legislative department

What the syllabus asks about, in the order it asks:

• Composition, qualifications, term for the Senate and the House — and for the House, legislative districts, apportionment, and the party-list system. That is text-heavy and highly markable: qualifications and terms are recited from the Constitution.
• Privileges, inhibitions and disqualifications — the parliamentary privileges and their limits, and the prohibited interests. Questions here usually ask whether a member may do something.
• Quorum and voting majorities — the different fractions for different acts are a favourite: ordinary legislation, constitutional amendment, override, impeachment.
• Discipline of members — the grounds and the limits.
• Plenary legislative power and its limitations — including the procedural requirements for a valid statute: the form and manner of passage, the three-reading rule and its exceptions, the vote requirements, the veto and override.
• Non-legislative powers, and initiative and referendum.

The procedural block is where a candidate can score cheaply: it is a checklist, and either the bill complied or it did not.

The executive department

• Qualifications, election and term of the President and Vice-President — including the rules on re-election and the term limits.
• Privileges, inhibitions and disqualifications — executive immunity is a doctrine with a boundary (it operates during tenure, and it is not a bar to suit after), and questions usually probe the boundary.
• Powers of the President — the executive power, the commander-in-chief power, the appointing power with its confirmation rules and its prohibitions, the power over foreign affairs including treaties and executive agreements, the budgetary power, and the powers that are conditional or delegated.
• Succession — the order, and the conditions.

For each power, the examinable core is the source and the condition: which provision, exercisable when, subject to what.

The judicial department

• The concept of judicial power — including the expansion of the concept and the requirement that the power be exercised in a controversy.
• Judicial review, with its requirements: an actual case or controversy; a legal standing; the question raised at the earliest opportunity; and a constitutional question that is the lis mota of the case. Each of those four has its own jurisprudence and its own exceptions (notably in cases of transcendental importance and for facial challenges in free-expression cases).
• Judicial independence and fiscal autonomy — the constitutional guarantees that protect the judiciary's budget and its members.
• Appointments to the judiciary — the Judicial and Bar Council's role and the appointment process.
• The Supreme Court — its composition, its en banc and division powers, its rule-making power, and the modes of review that reach it.

Judicial review is the block that most often appears as a question, because it converts any statute into a case.

The constitutional commissions

Three bodies, one common template:

• Common provisions — independence, qualifications, terms, appointment, and the prohibition against holding other offices.
• CSC — the civil service, coverage, and the classes of appointment.
• COMELEC — its powers over elections, including the powers described as administrative and quasi-judicial.
• COA — audit jurisdiction, the disallowance power, and the remedies around it.

The efficient way to study the commissions is by the template: the same questions recur (who may be appointed, for how long, what may they decide, who reviews them), so a single comparison table covers three bodies.

How structure becomes an answer

Most political law questions are answered in four moves:

1. Identify the power at issue and its source (provision, statute, rule).
2. State the condition attached to it — the majority, the standard, the procedural requirement, the immunity.
3. Apply to the facts, naming which condition fails or is satisfied.
4. State the consequence — valid or invalid, immune or suable, within or outside jurisdiction.

That is also the shape of a procedural answer in Remedial Law, which is one reason the 25% sitting and this one reward the same study habits — see the question shapes.

The map in one page

If you can place a question on that page in the first thirty seconds, the doctrine usually follows — which is the argument for studying the structure before the details.