Trimming down 'grave abuse of discretion'

BECAUSE the Constitution of 1987 grants the Supreme Court the "duty" to determine whether any branch, agency or office of government has gravely abused its discretion, judicial review is rather a common occurrence in the Philippines, and it is not uncommon for citizens, interest groups and other concerned or supposedly aggrieved individuals to seek relief from the Supreme Court (no less!) by way of judicial review.

In the Graduate School of Law class that I teach at San Beda University this semester, we first went through the doctrine on judicial review in American jurisprudence. While Marbury v. Madison seems to allocate to the Supreme Court a considerable ambit for judicial review, it is as true that they observe the following interesting limits: First, when there is a textually manifested commitment of an issue to a political branch of government, then the courts will decline judicial review. Second, when the issue brought before the court is one for which the courts lack the judicial resources to resolve, the courts will decline judicial review.