BACOLOD City – Negros Occidental Third District Rep. Javier Miguel Benitez has filed House Bill No. 9468, seeking to establish a free, consolidated, and AI-searchable national database of Philippine laws and jurisprudence to address what he described as a “two-tier justice system” created by unequal access to legal information.
In a privilege speech delivered before the House of Representatives on May 25, Benitez highlighted what he called a “hidden injustice” in the country’s legal system, where citizens are expected to comply with laws that many cannot easily access or fully understand.
“We have ended up with two tiers of law in one Republic — one for those who can pay to understand it, and one for everyone else,” Benitez said.
The proposed measure would establish the Philippine Open Law System, a publicly accessible digital platform containing statutes, regulations, jurisprudence, and other legal issuances in a consolidated, continuously updated, and searchable format.
Benitez noted that while legal materials are technically available through government platforms such as the Official Gazette and the Supreme Court E-Library, the most practical and user-friendly legal databases remain largely accessible only through costly commercial subscriptions.
“A Makati law firm pays without a second thought. A farmer in Victorias will never see it,” he said.
The lawmaker anchored his proposal on Article 3 of the Civil Code, which states that “ignorance of the law excuses no one from compliance therewith.”
“If the State can punish citizens for not knowing the law, then the law must also be made knowable,” Benitez argued.
He also cited the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Tañada v. Tuvera, which held that the publication of laws is indispensable to their binding effect because citizens must first be informed of the rules that govern them.
Benitez further invoked Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which guarantees the public’s right to information on matters of public concern.
“The law is not the private property of lawyers, publishers, institutions, or government offices,” the bill’s explanatory note states. “It belongs to the people because it governs the people.”
To underscore the need for the measure, Benitez cited findings from the World Justice Project’s 2025 Rule of Law Index, which ranked the Philippines 97th out of 143 countries globally and 13th out of 15 countries in the East Asia and Pacific region.
He also pointed out that only one in five Filipinos facing legal problems are able to obtain legal assistance, while the Public Attorney’s Office handles more than 850,000 cases annually with only about 2,400 lawyers.
“A right you cannot find is not really a right at all,” he said.
The bill likewise addresses digital inequality. Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that only 48.8 percent of Filipino households had internet access in 2024, prompting the proposed platform to prioritize low-bandwidth, mobile-friendly, and offline-assisted accessibility.
Addressing concerns about cost and feasibility, Benitez cited successful open-access legal information systems abroad, including the European Union’s multilingual legal database, India Code, Australia’s AustLII, Kenya Law, and Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute in the United States.
He also referenced the Philippine government’s $287-million World Bank-supported digital infrastructure initiative launched in 2024.
“A national legal database is not a new burden,” Benitez said. “It is one more room in a house we are already building.”
The congressman argued that the Philippines has an opportunity to “leapfrog rather than catch up” by integrating artificial intelligence into legal accessibility efforts.
He noted that independent testing has shown specialized legal AI tools can generate inaccurate or fabricated responses when operating without verified legal databases. However, such errors decline significantly when AI systems are connected to authenticated and consolidated legal sources.
Under the proposed measure, the AI-searchable platform would help ordinary Filipinos navigate laws, regulations, and court rulings more efficiently.
Benitez clarified that the bill does not seek to undermine private legal publishers or subscription-based legal services.
“The plain text of the law was never theirs to sell,” he said, adding that private companies would remain free to offer legal commentary, analysis, annotations, and specialized services built on publicly accessible legal texts.
Concluding his speech, Benitez invoked the democratic principles embodied in the 1899 Malolos Constitution, which declared that sovereignty resides in the people.
“The law already belongs to the Filipino people,” he said. “All that remains for the State is to complete the job of putting it into their hands.”/PN
