“Government by judiciary” in the Philippines: Ideological and doctrinal framework

Governing the Philippines did not become judicialized overnight. Judicialization is deeply rooted, an instinctive preference for law-like techniques that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., no less, chastisedwhen the Philippineswas still aU.S. colony. He lamented the Philippine Supreme Court’s excessive reliance on legalistic interpretations that ignored either the equities or practicalities of cases, such legal formalism that saw the great powers of government in “fields of black and white [divided] with mathematical precision … into watertight compartments.”4