Happy Holidays!

No posting for two weekends.  It's the holidays, you know. No law books for the time being. I am playing catch-up with my online course.

I am taking the course Think Again: How to Reason and Argue. Click on the video below for the introduction.

The course will come in handy for my class Legal Technique and Logic.

The course is now on its 2nd lecture for the 5th week. But I am still on the 2nd lecture of 6 of the 4th week.

A Note on Boado's Notes

Notes and Cases on the Revised Penal Code and Special Penal Laws by Leonor D. Boado was well recommended.  So I got a copy of the 2012 Edition at the Rex Bookstore to check it out.

First the good impression. Page layout is well organized and font size is comfortable for reading in contrast to the font size of Reyes'. I think the books of Reyes can be done in bigger font size without making them any thicker if he leaves out the decisions of the Court of Appeals. Does anybody in real life refer to CA decisions?

One thing going against Boado's book is its running heads. It would really help if the Article number is shown in the running head to make the search for an article easier without flipping through many pages to get to where you want to be.

Here's a typical running head of Boado's, from the left and right pages (562 and 563) where she discussed Art. 202 (Vagrants and prostitutes):

This is the verso including a few lines from the text.

This is from the recto

Here's how Reyes did it on the verso (page 362) and recto (page 363) where he talked about the same article:

Verso

Recto

And here's how it's done in the book Criminal Law Conspectus by Regalado:

Verso

Recto including a few lines of text.

You will immediately find out where you are in the book. (Note: Boado, Reyes, and Regalado will need to revise these parts as vagrancy is no longer part of the penal code.)

But I like better the way De Leon presents the running heads of his various books. Here's a typical example from his book on Sales:

At a glance you can see the article number, the chapter title, and the page number. With the page number on the running heads, the bottom of the page can contain another line of words.

A Venta?

Page 1, Civil Code of the Philippines, Annotated, Volume V, 2013 Edition by Paras:

I would have glossed over this passage except that I found it queer that Paras would say that "the French refer to the contract as a venta,  while the Spaniards call it a venta."

The contract referred to by Paras is the contract of sale mentioned in Art. 1458 thusly:

Article 1458. By the contract of sale one of the contracting parties obligates himself to transfer the ownership of and to deliver a determinate thing, and the other to pay therefore a price certain in money or its equivalent.

[In a previous post I discussed the provenance of the term "price certain" in Art. 1458 which can be seen here.]

Why not say that both the French and the Spanish term for contract of sale is venta? Because it is not. The French for venta is vente.  Notice that I did not write a venta (Spanish) or a vente (French).

Paras, or the editors of the book, should have left out the italicized word a or at least not italicized it. Un-italicized it would be the English indefinite article. In italics it would refer to the Spanish preposition a and would change the meaning of the term. I am not familiar with French prepositions.

Paras said that Art. 1458 of the Philippine Civil Code is taken from Art. 1445 of the Spanish Civil Code. Here's Art. 1445 of the Codigo Civil.

Articulo 1445. Por el contrato de compra y venta uno de los contratantes se obliga a entregar una cosa determinada y el otro a pagar por ella un precio cierto, en dinero o signo que lo represent.

Notice how the Spanish preposition a is translated into English in Article 1458.  There are other equivalent words in English. Using google translate, a venta would be for sale in English.

In my next post I'll have something to say about the word avenditio as used by Paras.

A Smile Certain

Why would the Civil Code of the Philippines use price certain instead of certain price as in the following article?

This article, according to Paras, was taken from Article 1445 of the Spanish Civil Code. Very well then, let's look at the  the Spanish Civil Code which can be downloaded here.

Article 1445:

Or read the article in context from the web here. 

This is the current version of the Spanish Civil Code:

Download here.

Here's the modern rendering of the Article:

Article 1,445. Pursuant to the contract of sale and purchase, one of the contracting parties undertakes to deliver a specific thing and the other to pay a certain price for it, in money or something which represents it. 

So why price certain? Most probably because the people who were tasked to create a civil code for the Philippines were steeped in the Codigo Civil and perhaps more conversant in Español than in English. Like my grandpa who was wont to exclaim puñeta instead of sonafabitch what the fxxx.

(I hope my e-friend [meaning electronic friend through the internet]  Dean Jorge can verify if his father Dr. Bocobo  who was chairman of the Civil Code Committee was more comfortable in Español than in English.)

Here's the article in Español:

Artículo 1445. Por el contrato de compra y venta uno de los contratantes se obliga a entregar una cosa determinada y el otro a pagar por ella un precio cierto, en dinero o signo que lo represente.

In Spanish the adjective comes mostly after the noun. Hence for precio cierto the Civil Code Committee came up with price certain.

Oh, yes. The title of the post is from this song. And I'm more familiar with English than Spanish hence the inversion.