Contempt of constitutional rights

THERE is no doubt that the Congress has a right to conduct hearings and investigations. However, because it is not a judicial or even a quasi-judicial body, and it is not in its constitutional mandate to make conclusions of guilt, its power to investigate is limited only to those that would aid its legislative work.

This is clearly stipulated in Section 21 of Article VI of the 1987 Constitution, which states: “The Senate or the House of Representatives or any of its respective committees may conduct inquiries in aid of legislation in accordance with its duly published rules of procedure.”

Because they are hearings in aid of legislation, it is therefore inherent in the process that the proceedings would either be an examination of how laws are being implemented, or in gathering facts about a certain societal problem that would require legislation. Section 1 of the 2009 Senate Rules of Procedure for the Conduct of Investigations in Aid of Legislation clearly states that these inquiries “may refer to the implementation or reexamination of any law or appropriation, or in connection with any proposed legislation or the formulation of, or in connection with future legislation, or will aid in the review or formulation of a new legislative policy or enactment.”

However, the conduct of these hearings are limited by the Constitution, and by jurisprudence. The same Section 21 of the Constitution clearly reminds Congress that “the rights of persons appearing in or affected by such inquiries shall be respected.”

There is no law that treats congressional hearings as equivalent to judicial proceedings. These are governed by internal rules passed by Congress which are not in any way treated as statutes or laws. Thus, the basic rights accorded to individuals enshrined in the Constitution and other laws should never be diluted, considering that the rules passed by Congress are never to be seen as superior to the Constitution or these laws.

It is therefore interesting that despite the fact that these congressional hearings are done in aid of legislation, and therefore are by nature administrative in character, that both the House and the Senate internal rules refer to individuals invited to appear as “witnesses” instead of being mere resource persons. To label them as such already presupposes that there is some crime or wrongdoing that has been done that these people are being summoned not by an invitation, but by a subpoena.

What aggravates the adjudicative optics is the behavior of some members of Congress when they ask questions of their supposedly invited resource persons, but now they treat as if they are witnesses to the commission of a crime. We have seen persons who have been savaged literally, even openly libeled by members of Congress who are cloaked with parliamentary immunity.

This is an enormous power that is openly abused in a venue that does not provide protection to the resource persons who are now treated as if there is no longer any presumption of innocence and regularity. Worse, their due process rights are not even respected considering that while they are allowed to appear with their counsel, these counsels cannot even object to the line of questioning by the legislators, much more to cross-examine them or other so-called witnesses. On record, these congressional hearings have already proved fatal, with one incident of a general committing suicide in front of the grave of his mother after being pilloried and humiliated at a Senate hearing.

The Constitution protects the right to liberty, and no person shall be deprived of such without due process of law. It also guarantees that everyone is entitled to the right against self-incrimination. And yet, both houses of Congress have powers to cite these so-called witnesses in contempt, and have them detained, on the mere basis that their answers do not satisfy the members of Congress, as what happened to those Ilocos Norte officials who were detained by the House of Representatives in the past. At least the House limits the detention of those cited for contempt to only 10 days. The Senate is worse, as it gives the impression that it can detain people for life considering that it is a continuing body, until the Supreme Court in 2018 limited such period to end upon termination of the inquiry. The high court soundly denied the Senate the power to detain indefinitely and ruled that such move impairs the constitutional right to liberty of any individual.

In an ideal world, while Congress should retain the power or oversight over how laws are being implemented, particularly on how public funds are being spent, it cannot exceed the power allocated to it by the Constitution. Its investigative powers are technically administrative in character, and while it can possess contempt powers when its authority is being challenged by the refusal of resource persons to cooperate, or provide important information, such should be exercised within the ambit of the principle of the separation of powers.

The case of the US House of Representatives is particularly noteworthy here, where a motion to cite Steve Bannon for contempt was voted upon by the entire House and was passed on to the justice department, an agency under the executive branch, for proper determination of probable cause. Should probable cause be found, then it is passed on to the courts.

In Neri v. the Senate, the court has already found Congress to have gravely abused its powers in citing former Economic secretary Romulo Neri for contempt. It’s about time we take another closer look into the conduct of congressional investigations in aid of legislation, and to seriously weigh it against the rubric of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Certainly, we cannot allow Congress to use its contempt powers to protect its right to pass legislation by denying resource persons, whom it mislabels as witnesses, their constitutionally guaranteed rights. We cannot allow its contempt powers to be contemptuous of those rights.