Love ‘Hugot’ lines from Supreme Court decisions

“Love is founded on a promise: to seek beyond ourselves in order to enable the other to continue to become the best version of themselves.”

Thus declared  Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen in Tan-Andal vs. Andal (G.R. No. 196359, May 11, 2021) that involves an annulment case based on psychological incapacity.

Dubbed as the love guru, Justice Leonen stressed   that “being in love can be carried on the wings of poetry, announced publicly through each other’s gazes. It is made real and felt with every act of unconditional care and comfort that the lover provides. Love can be beyond labels.”

Decisions on love, marital affairs and disciplinary proceedings are interesting topics of the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE).

READ:

Eskrimadoras as brave Filipina warriors in CCP Pasinaya 2025

Evolution of dating: From pen pals, speed dating to pitching!

On legalizing divorce or should only death do us part?

“Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp it needs to be fed out of the oil of another’s heart or its flames burn low,” Leonen said in his dissenting opinion in Republic v. Cantor (G.R. No. 184621, December 10, 2013) adding that “the waiting is as painful to the spirit as the endless search for a person that probably did not want to be found or could no longer be found.”

“Love is complex. It is unique to individuals in love,” Leonen underscored in his dissenting opinion in XXX v People (G.R. No.252739  April 16, 2024). “How to love and how to un-love are both first freedoms that should be protected against the intervention of the state. We continually discover ourselves as we go through all that is there in our intimate relationships.”

“Love is useless unless it is shared with another.  Indeed, no man is an island” is one of the often cited quote lifted from Chi Ming Tsoi vs. Lao-Tsoi (GR No. 119190, January 16, 1997) . I first read the case as a law student at the University of the Philippines College of Law, wherein Leonen was one of my professors.

The Supreme Court underscored that “an expressive interest in each other’s feelings at a time it is needed by the other can go a long way in deepening the relationship. The egoist has nothing but himself. Sexual intimacy is a gift and a participation in the mystery of creation.”

In Quiogue vs Quiogue (G.R. No. 203992 August 22, 2022), the Supreme Court said that “Love will always flow through our lives in this inconsistent, unknowable way, and we cannot press pause on the joyful bits, nor fast-forward the suffering.”

“Litigation to the sorrows caused by a broken heart and a broken promise must be discouraged,” the court said in Guevarra v. Banach (G.R. No. 214016, November 24, 2021) adding that “an individual has the autonomy to choose whom to marry, or whether to marry at all.”

“If the two eventually fell in love, despite the disparity in their ages and academic levels, this only lends substance to the truism that the heart has reasons of its own which reason does not know,” from Chua-Qua vs Tay Tung High School (G.R. No. 49549,  August 30, 1990)

“Love is not a license for lust” from People v. Bautista (G.R. No. 140278, June 3, 2004).

“This case started with dreams and hopes, followed by appropriate planning and serious endeavors, but terminated in frustration and, what is worse, complete public humiliation,” from Wassmer v. Velez, (G.R. No. L-20089, December 26 1964).

“There can be no love where respect is gone,” from People vs. Rivera  (G.R. No. 130607, November 17, 1999 )

“Individuals who are in love had the power to let love grow or let love die – it is a choice one had to face when love is not the love one expected,” from  Padilla-Rumbaua v. Rumbaua, (G.R. No. 166738, August 14, 2009).

“She unconditionally laid herself prostrate to his charms, too much enamored of him to care about anything else. For, as philosopher Blaise Pascal has so pithily stated of the profundity of human love, ‘love has reasons that reason cannot explain,” from Abaigar vs. Paz  (A.M. No. 997,  September 10, 1979).

“The universal puff about love being free, doubtless a stale statement, remains a useful piece of legal advice yet for the roaming lothario, to stress that money in all its forms is not the legitimate consideration for passion and affection which ordinarily spring from courtship and requited love, nor does it endow a license to subject the object of his affection to lewd desires,” from People v.  Egan, (G.R. No. 139338, 28 May 2002).

“If he really loved her, then the noblest thing he could have done was to walk away,” from Cojuanco, Jr. v. Palma, (A.M. Case No. 2474, 15 September 2004).

“One of the ironic verities of life, it has been said, is that sorrow is sometimes a touchstone of love,” from Libi v. IAC , (G.R. No. 70890, September 18, 1992)

“Statistics never lie, but lovers often do, quipped a sage. This sad truth has unsettled many a love transformed into matrimony. Any sort of deception between spouses, no matter the gravity, is always disquieting,” from Antonio v. Reyes, (G.R. No. 155800, March 10, 2006).

“The Court, like all well-meaning persons, has no desire to dash romantic fancies, yet in the exercise of its duty, is all too willing when necessary to raise the wall that tears Pyramus and Thisbe asunder,” from Concerned Employee v.  Mayor (A.M. No. P-02-1564,  November 23, 2004).

(Peyups is the moniker of University of the Philippines. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the seafarers’ division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan law offices. For comments, e-mail info@sapalovelez.com, or call 0908-8665786.)