The Foundations of the Modern Philippine State: Imperial Rule and the American Constitutional Tradition in the Philippine Islands, 1898–1935

Abstract

Leia Castañeda Anastacio has produced a volume that will likely become a go-to text for those interested in the constitutional history of the Philippines and for those who study the legal history of the United States. The central argument that guides readers through the interaction of these two intersecting legal histories is that the colonial governmental and legal structures created by the American imperial experiment in the early-twentieth century provided a blueprint for the Philippine constitution. From the start, Anastacio links the authoritarian ruler of her youth, Ferdinand Marcos (the Philippine president from 1965 to 1986), directly to the strong executive leadership model established during U.S. imperial rule in the islands, which saw Filipinos “enjoy the trappings of popular sovereignty while depriving them of political control” (p. 10). The author sees the roots of this uneven distribution of power in the prevailing racialized and “civilizing” notions of the era. For many U.S. imperialists, the full-scale transferral of American institutions and legal systems was simply not practicable, and, thus, a strange and distorted colonial hybrid emerged; its impact is still felt today.