Short answer. Under Article 635 of the Civil Code, easements established for public or communal use are primarily governed by special laws and regulations applicable to those easements. The Civil Code's provisions on easements serve only as a fallback when no special law addresses the matter.
What the law says
All matters concerning easements established for public or communal use shall be governed by the special laws and regulations relating thereto, and, in the absence thereof, by the provisions of this Title.
Civil Code, Article 635 — Easements for Public Use. Read the full provision →
Special laws come first
Article 635 of the Civil Code establishes a clear hierarchy for public and communal easements. Special laws and the regulations issued under them govern these easements in the first instance. The Civil Code itself steps back: it applies only when no special law or regulation addresses the matter. This means that before looking to the Civil Code's general Title on easements, a practitioner must first identify whether any applicable statute specifically governs the type of public easement at issue — for example, laws on roads, waterworks, utilities, or coastal access.
Public easements distinguished from private ones
A public easement or communal easement is one whose benefit belongs to the general public or to an entire community rather than to an identifiable private landowner. Common examples include rights of way along rivers or shores, utility corridors, public drainage systems, and access roads serving a whole barangay or municipality. These differ from the typical private easement, in which one parcel of land serves another specific parcel. The distinction matters because public easements affect the community broadly — they cannot ordinarily be waived by any single private party.
The Civil Code as fallback
When no special law directly addresses a matter involving a public or communal easement, the provisions of the Civil Code's Title on easements apply. This fallback role means the Civil Code supplies the default rules: how easements are created, modified, extinguished, and what obligations they impose on the owner of the burdened property. In practice, many public easements are already addressed by specific legislation — laws on water, land use, utilities, and local government often contain their own easement provisions. The Civil Code therefore operates mainly in the gaps those laws leave.
Why this hierarchy matters in practice
If you own land burdened by a public or communal easement — a road easement, a drainage corridor, a power line right-of-way — the rights and limits of that burden are set first by the law or regulation that created it. The width of the easement, the permitted uses, compensation obligations, and the process for extinguishment are all questions to be answered by the relevant special law, not by the Civil Code's general framework. The Civil Code fills in only what those laws do not cover. Knowing which law applies to a specific public easement is therefore the essential first step in any property dispute involving such rights.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- National Power Corporation vs. Yunita Tuazon, et al, G.R. No. 193023, June 29, 2011 — read the decision on LawPhil →