The Philippine Supreme Court’s Ruling on the Mining Act: A Political Science Perspective

The study tests the plausibility of an attitudinal account of the Philippine Supreme Court’s December 2004 ruling reversing its original decision invalidating the financial and technical assistance agreement (FTAA) provisions of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 or Republic Act No. 7942. As a political science-informed depiction of Supreme Court decision-making, the attitudinal account argues that justices decide cases on the basis of their ideological attitudes (i.e., personal policy preferences), and ruling reversals result from (1) composition or membership change; (2) policy position change – i.e., a change in the personal policy preferences of the justices; or (3) issue change – i.e., a change in the way the justices appreciate the issues raised by the “facts” of the case. The author tested the plausibility and/or significance of each of the three aforementioned attitude-centered accounts as explanations for the Mining Act ruling reversal. To test for composition change, the researcher analyzed the voting summaries for the January and December 2004 Mining Act rulings with focus placed on the votes of justices who either left or joined the Court in the period between the two Mining Act rulings. To test for issue change, the author conducted a qualitative content analysis of the “case facts” and “issues” that the justices were responding to in their January and December rulings and opinions on the Mining Act case. To test for policy position change, a cumulative scale of judicial votes in economic cases involving the validity of executive actions was constructed and analyzed. Cumulative scaling revealed the existence of attitudinal differences among members of the Supreme Court in 2004. It also suggested that, for the most part, the personal policy preferences of the justices remained stable. Among the three attitude-centered explanations, issue change was shown to be most significant as an explanation for the Mining Act ruling reversal. The general finding of the study is that the attitudinal perspective offers a plausible account of the reversal.