it is a well-settled principle of legal hermeneutics that words of a statute will be interpreted in their natural, plain and ordinary acceptation and signification, unless it is evident that the legislature intended a technical or special legal meaning to those words.

We further quote the relevant ruling in David v. Arroyo on the proscription anent a facial challenge:^[38] 

Moreover, the overbreadth doctrine is not intended for testing the validity of a law that reflects legitimate state interest in maintaining comprehensive control over harmful, constitutionally unprotected conduct. Undoubtedly, lawless violence, insurrection and rebellion are considered harmful and constitutionally unprotected conduct. In Broadrick v. Oklahoma, it was held:

It remains a matter of no little difficulty to determine when a law may properly be held void on its face and when such summary action is inappropriate. But the plain import of our cases is, at the very least, that facial overbreadth adjudication is an exception to our traditional rules of practice and that its function, a limited one at the outset, attenuates as the otherwise unprotected behavior that it forbids the State to sanction moves from pure speech toward conduct and that conduct even if expressive falls within the scope of otherwise valid criminal laws that reflect legitimate state interests in maintaining comprehensive controls over harmful, constitutionally unprotected conduct.

Thus, claims of facial overbreadth are entertained in cases involving statutes which, by their terms, seek to regulate only spoken words and again, that overbreadth claims, if entertained at all, have been curtailed when invoked against ordinary criminal laws that are sought to be applied to protected conduct. Here, the incontrovertible fact remains that PP 1017 pertains to a spectrum of conduct, not free speech, which is manifestly subject to state regulation.

Second, facial invalidation of laws is considered as manifestly strong medicine, to be used sparingly and only as a last resort, and is generally disfavored; The reason for this is obvious. Embedded in the traditional rules governing constitutional adjudication is the principle that a person to whom a law may be applied will not be heard to challenge a law on the ground that it may conceivably be applied unconstitutionally to others, i.e., in other situations not before the Court. A writer and scholar in Constitutional Law explains further:

The most distinctive feature of the overbreadth technique is that it marks an exception to some of the usual rules of constitutional litigation. Ordinarily, a particular litigant claims that a statute is unconstitutional as applied to him or her; if the litigant prevails, the courts carve away the unconstitutional aspects of the law by invalidating its improper applications on a case to case basis. Moreover, challengers to a law are not permitted to raise the rights of third parties and can only assert their own interests. In overbreadth analysis, those rules give way; challenges are permitted to raise the rights of third parties; and the court invalidates the entire statute on its face, not merely as applied for so that the overbroad law becomes unenforceable until a properly authorized court construes it more narrowly. The factor that motivates courts to depart from the normal adjudicatory rules is the concern with the chilling; deterrent effect of the overbroad statute on third parties not courageous enough to bring suit. The Court assumes that an overbroad laws very existence may cause others not before the court to refrain from constitutionally protected speech or expression. An overbreadth ruling is designed to remove that deterrent effect on the speech of those third parties.

In other words, a facial challenge using the overbreadth doctrine will require the Court to examine PP 1017 and pinpoint its flaws and defects, not on the basis of its actual operation to petitioners, but on the assumption or prediction that its very existence may cause others not before the Court to refrain from constitutionally protected speech or expression.

xxx xxx xxx
And third, a facial challenge on the ground of overbreadth is the most difficult challenge to mount successfully, since the challenger must establish that there can be no instance when the assailed law may be valid. Here, petitioners did not even attempt to show whether this situation exists.

Petitioners likewise seek a facial review of PP 1017 on the ground of vagueness. This, too, is unwarranted.

Related to the overbreadth doctrine is the void for vagueness doctrine which holds that a law is facially invalid if men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application. It is subject to the same principles governing overbreadth doctrine. For one, it is also an analytical tool for testing on their faces statutes in free speech cases. And like overbreadth, it is said that a litigant may challenge a statute on its face only if it is vague in all its possible applications.

Be that as it may, the test in determining whether a criminal statute is void for uncertainty is whether the language conveys a sufficiently definite warning as to the proscribed conduct when measured by common understanding and practice.^[39] This Court has similarly stressed that the vagueness doctrine merely requires a reasonable degree of certainty for the statute to be upheld - not absolute precision or mathematical exactitude.^[40]

As structured, Section 45^[41] of Republic Act No. 8189 makes a recital of election offenses under the same Act. Section 45(j) is, without doubt, crystal in its specification that a violation of any of the provisions of Republic Act No. 8189 is an election offense. The language of Section 45(j) is precise. The challenged provision renders itself to no other interpretation. A reading of the challenged provision involves no guesswork. We do not see herein an uncertainty that makes the same vague.

Notably, herein petitioners do not cite a word in the challenged provision, the import or meaning of which they do not understand. This is in stark contrast to the case of Estrada v. Sandiganbayan^[42] where therein petitioner sought for statutory definition of particular words in the challenged statute. Even then, the Court in Estrada rejected the argument.

This Court reasoned:

The rationalization seems to us to be pure sophistry. A statute is not rendered uncertain and void merely because general terms are used therein, or because of the employment of terms without defining them; much less do we have to define every word we use. Besides, there is no positive constitutional or statutory command requiring the legislature to define each and every word in an enactment. Congress is not restricted in the form of expression of its will, and its inability to so define the words employed in a statute will not necessarily result in the vagueness or ambiguity of the law so long as the legislative will is clear, or at least, can be gathered from the whole act, which is distinctly expressed in the Plunder Law.

Moreover, it is a well-settled principle of legal hermeneutics that words of a statute will be interpreted in their natural, plain and ordinary acceptation and signification, unless it is evident that the legislature intended a technical or special legal meaning to those words. The intention of the lawmakers who are, ordinarily, untrained philologists and lexicographers to use statutory phraseology in such a manner is always presumed.

Perforce, this Court has underlined that an act will not be held invalid merely because it might have been more explicit in its wordings or detailed in its provisions, especially where, because of the nature of the act, it would be impossible to provide all the details in advance as in all other statutes.^[43]

EN BANC

[ G. R. No. 167011, April 30, 2008 ]

SPOUSES CARLOS S. ROMUALDEZ AND ERLINDA R. ROMUALDEZ, PETITIONERS, VS. COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS AND DENNIS GARAY, RESPONDENTS.