Poetic justice: when murder rhymes with detention

Page 582, The Revised Penal Code, Book Two, 2008 Edition, by Reyes:

I like the word irrefragably as used by the ponente, Justice Callejo, but an alarm bell went off when he cited Article 268. My first thought was that it was a typo by Reyes because kidnapping is Art. 267 while Art. 268 is about illegal detention. Checking the decision at  Philippine Report Online revealed that Reyes correctly copied the article.

But working back a few paragraphs shows that in fact the ponente was talking about Article 267, and not Article 268:

Somehow it is a case of poetic license: Article 268 rhymes with Article 248. Does that make Justice Callejo a poet Justice?

Update, March 4, 2013: Justice Regalado in his book Criminal Law Conspectus explained that in fact Article 268 is also about kidnapping but the epigraph made it confusing. So there, I caught myself.

When matter matters too much

Many legal phrases and terms are unique to the Philippines. In my previous post, I discussed why we use price certain instead of the straightforward certain price.

Here's another unique Philippine legal terminology from the Revised Penal Code. Instead of the codal, here's a scanned portion from Justice Regalado's Criminal Law Conspectus, page 463:

A reader will immediately sense something awkward with the phrase material matter. It conjures repeat again for the second twice.

Justice Regalado, on page 467, quotes the way the Supreme Court defines the phrase:

Black's Law dictionary has entries for material and  matter but none for the two words together. Black defines material and matter as:

Material and matter come from the same etymological origin. From the Online Etymology Dictionary we have these entries:

It seems that material matter is simply exaggerated emphasis. Matter, in regard to Article 183, is enough in itself without material describing it.

I could hear now Professor Felipe Belciña, had I brought this up in class, saying: "Wait until you get to the Supreme Court!".  I think I owe one to Prof. Belciña so here goes: "Your compendium in Criminal law II is good." Altho I am a non-theist, I say may you rest in peace.

For the lack of space avenditio was born

In my previous post  I talked how Paras omitted the negative prefix causing me a lot of headache in the process. This time Paras deleted the space between two words giving birth to an unknown term.

From page 1 of the Civil Code of the Philippines Annotated, Vol. V, 2013 Edition:

After defining sale, he delved into the history of the term and wrote that sale came from the Latin word avenditio. In another post  I discussed the difficulties of the claim of  Paras about the French and Spanish usage of the words a venta. In this post let's see how avenditio came into being.

Google Translate says that sale in Latin is venditionem or venditio. Not avenditionem nor avenditio.

Duhaime's Legal Dictionary translates venditio as a sale. Notice the space between the article and the noun.
Here's how Duhaime defines venditio:

A term of ancient Roman law but still reflected in the civil law and French language for which the verb for sale is vendre and the noun vente. Even in English, a seller is known alternatively as a vendor. In Latin, a male seller is a venditor and a female, venditrix.

So how did Paras come up with avenditio? This passage from the book A Text-Book of Roman Law: From Augustus to Justinian  By W. W. Buckland may explain:

Or this footnote from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 4,  By Edward Gibbon:

The old editions of Paras contain the same word. I'd like to believe that this is just proofreading oversight. But who knows?

For the lack of "un" the reader was lost

Prof. Darryl  Largo, we fondly called him "Bretch of Contract" for his second name,  recommended the book of De Leon for our Oblicon class. I already had Paras' book but in order to better follow the discussions I got De Leon's book. But I found De Leon's book to be dense in many parts, not to mention the typos, so Paras came in handy at times.

In our discussion of unenforceable contracts I relied mostly on Paras. That's where I got lost.

On Page 784, Civil Code of the Philippines, Annotated, Book IV, 2008 Edition, by Paras we have this:

No wonder I couldn't make heads and tails of the rest of the article and the exposition of Paras because of the absence of the negative prefix.

I know I should have cleared the problem by reading the context. But under Prof. Largo's class and my other classes in my previous universe we were always in a hurry because of the numerous jurisprudence to read in conjunction with an article. So you get through the codal provision, zero in on the article, and catch a glimpse of the author's thoughts on the matter.

In my current universe I have more time to do contextual reading. So I checked the 2013 Edition last week, see my post here, while buying another book at Rex Bookstore. The "un" was still lacking. And other readers of my type are bound to get lost.

Unless you are reading only De Leon under Prof. Largo.

Address Still Not Found

In one of my posts which can be read here, I mentioned how Reyes and Paras pointed  to wrong or already repealed articles. The books I referred to were the 2008 editions. So perhaps they could have edited the wrong references by now.

I was buying this book by Willard B. Riano at the Rex Bookstore

when I checked out the new editions of Paras and Reyes. They are still there.

And, yes, the cover of Riano's book is beautiful. But we should not judge the book by its cover, right?

While I Was Away

In my last post, I thought I'd be away only for the holidays of christmas and new year. But my desktop died after christmas. It was already 5 years old; ready for the graveyard. I switched to the notebooks and the iPad for my surfing but waited to get a new desktop before updating this blog. I still haven't gotten used to using a notebook's keyboard for extended typing.

My rather disappointing experience in getting a replacement for my desktop is narrated here.

While I was away, I was busy reading these two books.

Notice my bookmark?

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.