Mateo Carino v. Insular Government of the Philippine Islands

• Decision Date: 23 February 1909
• Docket Number: No. 72,72
• Parties: MATEO CARINO, Plff. in Err., v. INSULAR GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

212 U.S. 449

29 S.Ct. 334

53 L.Ed. 594

MATEO CARINO, Plff. in Err.,

v INSULAR GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.

No. 72.

Argued January 13, 1909.

Decided February 23, 1909.

Messrs. Frederic R. Coudert, Howard Thayer Kingsbury, Charles C. Cohn, D. R. Williams, and Paul Fuller for plaintiff in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 450-452 intentionally omitted] Solicitor General Hoyt and Paul Charlton for defendant in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 453-455 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice Holmes delivered the opinion of the court:

This was an application to the Philippine court of land registration for the registration of certain land. The application was granted by the court on March 4, 1904. An appeal was taken to the court of first instance of the province of Benguet, on behalf of the government of the Philippines, and also on behalf of the United States, those governments having taken possession of the property for public and military purposes. The court of first instance found the facts and dismissed the application upon grounds of law. This judgment was affirmed by the supreme court (7 Philippine, 132), and the case then was brought here by writ of error.

The material facts found are very few. The applicant and plaintiff in error is an Igorot of the province of Benguet, where the land lies. For more than fifty years before the treaty of Paris, April 11, 1899 [30 Stat. at L. 1754], as far back as the findings go, the plaintiff and his ancestors had held the land as owners. His grandfather had lived upon it, and had maintained fences sufficient for the holding of cattle, according to the custom of the country, some of the fences, it seems, having been of much earlier date. His father had cultivated parts and had used parts for pasturing cattle, and he had used it for pasture in his turn. They all had been recognized as owners by the Igorots, and he had inherited or received the land from his father, in accordance with Igorot custom. No document of title, however, had issued from the Spanish Crown, and although, in 1893-1894, and again in 1896-1897, he made application for one under the royal decrees then in force, nothing seems to have come of it, unless, perhaps, information that lands in Benguet could not be conceded until those to be occupied for a sanatorium, etc., had been designated,—a purpose that has been carried out by the Philippine government and the United States. In 1901 the plaintiff filed a petition, alleging ownership, under the mortgage law, and the lands were registered to him, that process, however, establishing only a possessory title, it is said.

Before we deal with the merits, we must dispose of a technical point. The government has spent some energy in maintaining that this case should have been brought up by appeal, and not by writ of error. We are of opinion, however, that the mode adopted was right. The proceeding for registration is likened to bills in equity to quiet title, but it is different in principle. It is a proceeding in rem under a statute of the type of the Torrens act, such as was discussed in Tyler v. Registration Ct. Judges, 175 Mass. 71, 51 L.R.A. 433, 55 N. E. 812. It is nearer to law than to equity, and is an assertion of legal title; but we think it unnecessary to put it into either pigeon hole. A writ of error is the general method of bringing cases to this court, an appeal the exception, confined to equity in the main. There is no reason for not applying the general rule to this case. Ormsby v. Webb, 134 U. S. 47, 65, 33 L. ed. 805, 812, 10 Sup. Ct. Rep. 478; Campbell v. Porter, 162 U. S. 478, 40 L. ed. 1044, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 871; Metropolitan R. Co. v. District of Columbia (Metropolitan R. Co. v. Macfarland) 195 U. S. 322, 49 L. ed. 219, 25 Sup. Ct. Rep. 28.

Another preliminary matter may as well be disposed of here. It is suggested that, even if the applicant have title, he cannot have it registered, because the Philippine Commission's act No. 926, of 1903, excepts the province of Benguet among others from its operation. But that act deals with the acquisition of new titles by homestead entries, purchase, etc., and the perfecting of titles begun under the Spanish law. The applicant's claim is that he now owns the land, and is entitled to registration under the Philippine Commission's act No. 496, of 1902, which established a court for that purpose with jurisdiction 'throughout the Philippine archipelago,' § 2, and authorized in general terms applications to be made by persons claiming to own the legal estate in fee simple, as the applicant does. He is entitled to registration if his claim of ownership can be maintained.

We come, then, to the question on which the case was decided below,—namely, whether the plaintiff owns the land. The position of the government, shortly stated, is that Spain assumed, asserted, and had title to all the land in the Philippines except so far as it saw fit to permit private titles to be acquired; that there was no prescription against the Crown, and that, if there was, a decree of June 25, 1880, required registration within a limited time to make the title good; that the plaintiff's land was not registered, and therefore became, if it was not always, public land; that the United States succeeded to the title of Spain, and so that the plaintiff has no rights that the Philippine government is bound to respect.

If we suppose for the moment that the government's contention is so far correct that the Crown of Spain in form asserted a title to this land at the date of the treaty of Paris, to which the United States succeeded, it is not to be assumed without argument that the plaintiff's case is at an end. It is true that Spain, in its earlier decrees, embodied the universal feudal theory that all lands were held from the Crown, and perhaps the general attitude of conquering nations toward people not recognized as entitled to the treatment accorded to those in the same zone of civilization with themselves. It is true, also, that, in legal theory, sovereignty is absolute, and that, as against foreign nations, the United States may assert, as Spain asserted, absolute power. But it does not follow that, as against the inhabitants of the Philippines, the United States asserts that Spain had such power. When theory is left on one side, sovereignty is a question of strength, and may vary in degree. How far a new sovereign shall insist upon the theoretical relation of the subjects to the head in the past, and how far it shall recognize actual facts, are matters for it to decide.

The province of Benguet was inhabited by a tribe that the Solicitor General, in his argument, characterized as a savage tribe that never was brought under the civil or military government of the Spanish Crown. It seems probable, if not certain, that the Spanish officials would not have granted to anyone in that province the registration to which formerly the plaintiff was entitled by the Spanish laws, and which would have made his title beyond question good. Whatever may have been the technical position of Spain, it does not follow that, in the view of the United States, he had lost all rights and was a mere trespasser when the present government seized his land. The argument to that effect seems to amount to a denial of native titles throughout an important part of the island of Luzon, at least, for the want of ceremonies which the Spaniards would not have permitted and had not the power to enforce.

The acquisition of the Philippines was not like the settlement of the white race in the United States. Whatever consideration may have been shown to the North American Indians, the dominant purpose of the whites in America was to occupy the land. It is obvious that, however stated, the reason for our taking over the Philippines was different. No one, we suppose,...