Co Kim Cham V Valdez Tan Keh
Co Kim Cham V Valdez Tan Keh
Co Kim Cham V Valdez Tan Keh
1
the judicial acts and proceedings of those governments remain good and the said case. While the motion for reconsideration filed by the respondents
valid even after the liberation or reoccupation of the Philippines by the were thereby denied.
American and Filipino forces. The governments by the Philippine Executive
Commission and the Republic of the Philippines during the Japanese
military occupation being de facto governments, necessarily follows that the
judicial acts and proceedings of the courts of justice of those governments,
which are not of a political complexion, were good and valid, and, by virtue
of the well-known principle of postliminy in international law, remained good
and valid after the liberation or re-occupation of the Philippines by the
American and Filipino forces under the leadership of General Douglas
MacArthur.
a. Political and international law recognizes that all acts and
proceedings of a de facto government (supported by the military
force and deriving their authority from the laws of war) are good
and valid.
2. t should be presumed that it was not, and could not have been, the intention
of General Douglas MacArthur, in using the phrase “processes of any other
government” in said proclamation, to refer to judicial processes, in violation
of said principles of laws of nation. The legislative power of a commander in
chief of military forces who liberates or reoccupies his own territory which
has been occupied by an enemy, during the military and before the
restoration of the civil regime, is as broad as that of the commander in chief
of the military forces of invasion and occupation. It is to be presumed that
General Douglas MacArthur, who was acting as an agent or a
representative of the Government and the President of the United States,
constitutional commander in chief of the United States Army, did not intend
to act against the principles of the law of nations asserted by the Supreme
Court of the United States from the early period of its existence, applied by
the Presidents of the United States, and later embodied in the Hague
Conventions of 1907.
3. In the Executive Order of President McKinley to the Secretary of War, “in
practice, (the municipal laws) are not usually abrogated but are allowed to
remain in force and to be administered by the ordinary tribunals
substantially as they were before the occupation. “From a theoretical point
of view, it may be said that the conqueror is armed with the right to
substitute his arbitrary will for all preexisting forms of government,
legislative, executive and judicial. From the standpoint of actual practice
such arbitrary will is restrained by the provision of the law of nations which
compels the conqueror to continue local laws and institution so far as
military necessity will permit.