In his celebrated Federalist Papers No. 51, a treatise written in the 1700s during the framing of the American Constitution, to provide future generations with context as regards the interpretation of their fundamental law, James Madison famously said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Men are, of course, hardly celestial beings, and so the concept of constitutional limitations was born. The United States Charter, pioneering the tripartite system of government, allocated to each great department — the Executive, Legislative and Judicial — their own respective “territories,” as it were, spheres of power where governmental prerogatives were exercised without interference from the others. Thus was created the phrase “separate but equal.”

Madison and that other great constitutionalist of the time, Alexander Hamilton, who collaborated on the Federalist Papers, had to institute a measure to ensure that none of the departments would outrun the bounds of their powers or encroach on those of the others. But who was to say when any department had overstepped its functions? This was answered in the seminal American case of Marbury v. Madison, whence came that iconic declaration that “(i)t is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.” This is now called the doctrine of judicial review.

And that is the very same power that was transplanted to our constitutional system. Under the present (1987) Constitution, that same authority is now on steroids, so to speak, as our courts have been vested with the “obligation” to check “grave abuse of discretion” on the part of any agency of government. Or, as our constitutionalists would call it, “expanded judicial power.”

Now, if there is one political wherewithal more abused than any other by the Legislature (aside, of course, from the “power of the purse” whereby some legislators open the public purse for their own ends), it is that of “inquiries in aid of legislation.” Conceived to allow the lawmakers the authority to gather information from any and all persons — even those in the highest echelons of the other branches of government — to assist them in formulating good legislation, it has been badly utilized by some misguided members of Congress to bully and browbeat political opponents, anyone unpopular at the moment, or sometimes just any person whose face the legislators do not like.

Fortunately, many times the Supreme Court has stepped in to rein in the use of this power. In a slew of landmark cases, the High Court has invalidated actions — mostly by the Senate — where people were summoned to testify before legislative committees and subjected to verbal abuse, their arms twisted to reveal self-incriminatory information or to coerce them to confess against others, with those resisting bludgeoned into submission by using the power of contempt as a blunt instrument, with the end in view of making the lawmaker look good to the gallery. So overused was this style that it has gained its own label: “investigation in aid of reelection.”

Time and again, the Supreme Court, as the last bulwark of constitutional rights, to these practices has shouted “enough!” Indeed, such “excesses and “illegitimate ends” for the purpose of “grandstanding” — to use the very words of the High Tribunal in Neri v. Blue Ribbon Committee — have not been countenanced.

On numerous occasions, members of Congress have been chastised for abusing such privilege, most recently in the 2023 case of Ong v. Senate Blue Ribbon Committee (argued for the petitioner before the Supreme Court by a lawyer who may be diminutive but who is reportedly oozing with sex appeal).

In that case, the ponencia made it clear that Congress is not a court, nor an investigative body, nor a prosecutor. Its job is to make laws, not to determine guilt or innocence.

Unfortunately, some legislators still refuse to listen. Perhaps, in the case of legislative hearings, they have become hard of hearing.