Some notes on the historico-legal aspect of American vested rights acquired under the parity ordinance of the Philippine constitution

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a documentary background to one of the current controversies in Philippine- American relations. The issue is whether vested rights acquired by the Americans under the so-called "parity" clause of the Philippine constitution shall continue after July 3, 1974. A secondary aim is to draw a parallelism between the first American invasion of Philippine sovereignty in 1898 and the "second invasion" in 1946 and offer a rationalization of why the historical pendulum that swung at the beginning of the twentieth century to generate "special relations" between the Philippines and the United States, has started to move in reverse.