The basis of Puerto Rico's constitutional status: Colony, compact, or "Federacy"?

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 122, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 115-140

  Rezvani, David A ^a,b  

^a BOSTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34247468089     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2007.tb00594.x     Document Type: Review

References (178)

1. On the history of the constitutional development of Puerto Rico, see especially José Trias Monge, Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World (New Haven, CTand London: Yale University Press, 1997), 1-140;
2. and Arnold H. Leibowitz, Defining Status: A Comparative Analysis of United States Territorial Relations (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1989), 127-185.
3. See also Raymond Carr, Puerto Rico: A Colonial Experiment (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 17-72;
4. W. Michael Reisman, Puerto Rico and the International Process: New Roles in Association (Washington DC: American Society of International Law, 1975), 2-35;
5. and Natan Lerner, "Puerto Rico: Autonomy, Statehood, Independence?" in Yoram Dinstein, ed., Models of Autonomy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981), 125-134.
6. For a notable case of how such views have affected U.S. leaders, see, Hearings before the House Committee on Resources "To provide a process leading to full self-government for Puerto Rico," H.R. 856,105th Congress, 1st sess., 1997, 40-445.
7. See for instance, Juan R. Torruella, The Supreme Court and Puerto Rico: The Doctrine of Separate and Unequal (Rio Piedras: University of Puerto Rico, 1985), 167-200;
8. Juan R. Torruella "One Hundred Years of Solitude: Puerto Rico's American Century" in Christina Duffy Burnett and Burke Marshall, eds., Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 241-250;
9. David M. Helfeid, "How Much of the United States Constitution and Statutes Are Applicable to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico?" Federal Rules Decisions 110 (November 1985): 452;
10. T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 77;
11. Peter J. Fliess, "Puerto Rico's Political Status under Its New Constitution," Western Political Quarterly 5 (December 1952): 635-656;
12. José A. Cabranes, "Puerto Rico: Out of the Colonial Closet," Foreign Policy 33 (Winter 1978-79), 68, For arguments on the unconstitutionality of final decision-making powers being allocated to territories such as Puerto Rico based on the Constitution's Presidential Appointment Clause rather than the Territorial Clause,
13. see Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman, The Constitution of Empire: Territorial Expansion and American Legal History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2004), 124-138.
14. The term "convention" used in the literature on the topic refers to unwritten constitutional rules rather than a meeting of officials to draft or change a written constitution, as in the "Constitutional Convention of 1787." In this paper, the terms "convention" and "unwritten constitutional rule" will be used interchangeably. On convention in Britain, see Geoffrey Marshall, Constitutional Conventions: The Rules and Forms of Political Accountability (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1984):
15. C.R. Munro, "Laws and Conventions Distinguished," Law Quarterly Review 91 (April 1975): 2.18-223;
16. Vernon Bogdanor, The Monarchy and the Constitution (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995);
17. R. Brazier, Ministers of the Crown (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997);
18. and R. Brazier, Constitutional Practice, 2nd ed. (Oxford. UK: Oxford University Press, 1994). On convention (unwritten constitutional rules) in the United States,
19. see Christopher G. Tiedeman, The Unwritten Constitution of the United States: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Fundamentals of American Constitutional Law (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1890);
20. James Bryce, American Commonwealth, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1895), 391-407;
21. James Wilson, "American Constitutional Conventions: The Judicially Unenforceable Rules that Combine with Judicial Doctrine and Public Opinion to Regulate Political Behavior," Buffalo Law Review 40 (Fall 1992): 645-738;
22. Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908);
23. Herbert W. Horwill, The Usages of the American Constitution (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1925);
24. William Bennett Munro, The Makers of the Unwritten Constitution (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 1-23;
25. Thomas C. Grey, "Do We Have an Unwritten Constitution?" Stanford Law Review 27 (February 1975): 703-718;
26. Thomas C. Grey, "Origins of the Unwritten Constitution: Fundamental Law in American Revolutionary Thought," Stanford Law Review 30 (May 1978): 843-893;
27. Thomas C. Grey, "The Original Understanding and the Unwritten Constitution" in Neil L. York, ed., Toward a More Perfect Union: Six Essays on the Constitution (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1988), 151-165;
28. Suzanna Sherry, "The Founders' Unwritten Constitution," University of Chicago Law Review 54 (1987): 11271177;
29. Bruce Ackerman, We The People (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991), 44-50, 81-130;
30. David A. Strauss, "Common Law Constitutional Interpretation," University of Chicago Law Review 63 (Summer 1996): 877-935;
31. Keith Whittington, Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999);
32. Richard H. Fallon, Jr., "Judicial Legitimacy and the Unwritten Constitution: A Comment on Miranda and Dickerson," New York Law School Law Review 45 (2000-2001): 119-140;
33. Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Implementing the Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001);
34. Michael Foley, The Silence of Constitutions: Gaps, "Abeyances," and Political Temperament in the Maintenance of Government (London: Routledge, 1989).
35. While others have not argued that Puerto Rico's status is conventionally entrenched, Daniel Elazar passingly referred to Puerto Rico as a federacy with sparse justification. See for instance, Daniel J. Elazar, "International and Comparative Federalism," PS: Political Science and Politics 26 (June 1993): 190-195. For brief use of the concept of federacy,
36. see Brendan O'Leary, "Building Inclusive States," Human Development Report Office Occasional Paper (United Nations Development Programme, 2004), 75-94, accessed at http://www.ids-ps.org/Doc/Oxford/5.PDF, June 2005;
37. Alfred C. Stepan, "Federalism and Democracy: Beyond the U.S. Model," Journal of Democracy 10 (1999): 20;
38. Ronald L. Watts, Comparing Federal Systems in the 1990s (Ontario: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 1996), 8-13;
39. and Michael R. Stevens, "Asymmetrical Federalism: The Federal Principle and the Survival of the Small Republic," Publius, The Journal of Federalism 1 (Fall 1977): 117-203.
40. On America's new empire-building strategies during this time, see Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, vol. 1 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. 2005), 89-98.
41. Late Corp. of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. United States (1889), 136 U.S. 1, 42. A well-known counter-example to this view was set forth by the Supreme Court in Dred Scott, in which it was argued that the territorial clause only applied to territories that were in the possession of the United States at the time when America became independent, and territories acquired after that would be governed under the provisions of the Constitution that apply to admitting new states. Scott v. Sandford (1856), 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 438-439, 443.
42. Aleinikoff, Semblances of Sovereignty, 75-76. This view, however, was sustained by Supreme Court decisions neither before nor after Dred Scott.
43. See, for instance, Dorr v. United States (1904), 195 US. 138, 140; Sere v. Puot (1810), 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 332, 337;
44. American Ins. Co. v. Canter (1828), 26 U.S. (1 Pet.) 511,542.
45. See also Leibowitz, Defining Status, 140-155.
46. Leibowitz, Defining Status, 141.
47. Downes v. Bidwell (1901), 182 U.S. 244, 294. For an excellent discussion of the Insular Cases,
48. see Leibowitz, Defining Status, 17-25.
49. For more on this see Leibowitz, Defining Status, 186.
50. Dowries v. Bidwell.
51. Act passed on 2 March 1917.
52. Monge, Puerto Rico, 88.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., 96.
55. Ibid., 120.
56. Ibid., 110.
57. For the full text of the 1931 Statute of Westminster, see K.C. Wheare, The Statute of Westminster and Dominion Status, 4th ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1949), 308-312.
58. Public Law 600, ch. 446, 64 Stat. 319 (1950).
59. Leibowitz, Defining Status, 165.
60. Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, February 1952, accessed at http://fopuertorico.org/constitu.shtml, 1 September 2005.
61. Public Law 447 of 3 July 1952, ch. 567,66 Stat. 327 (1952).
62. Examining Board v. Flores de Otero (1976), 426 U.S. 572, 494-596.
63. U. S. Public Law 600, Preamble.
64. Constitution of Puerto Rico, Article 1. Section 1.
65. On this view, see, for instance, Rafael Hernández Colón,"The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico: Territory or State?" Revista del Colegio deAbogados de Puerto Rico 19 (May 1959): 207-258;
66. Leibowitz, Defining Status, 172-175;
67. Arnold H. Leibowitz, "The Applicability of Federal Law to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico," Georgetown Law Journal 56 (December 1967): 219-271;
68. and Calvert Magruder, "The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico," University of Pittsburgh Law Review 15 (Fall 1958): 1-33. For a discussion of this view in the Congressional Hearings that ultimately produced Public Law 447,
69. see Hearings Before the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs (1952), S.J. Res. 151, 82nd Cong., 2d sess., 40-49. For a somewhat misleading retreat from pure compact theory, which confirms that Puerto Rico has domestic sovereignty and the doctrine of mutuality is intact, but nevertheless argues that the territory is still somehow a "colony," see José Trias Monge, "Injustice According to Law: The Insular Case and Other Oddities" in Christina Duffy Burnett and Burke Marshall, eds., Foreign in a Domestic Sense, 233.
70. Constitution of Puerto Rico, Article 7, Section 3.
71. See for instance Figueroa v. Puerto Rico (1953), 232 F.2d 615, 620 (1st Cir.)
72. and United States v. Lopez Andino (1987), 831 F.2d 1164 (1st Cir.), cert, denied, 486 U.S. 1034 (1988);
73. Leibowitz, Defining Status, 165-185.
74. United States v. Quinones (1985), 758 F.2d 40, 42 (1st Cir.).
75. United States v. Vega Figueroa (1997), 984 F. Supp. 71. 79 (D. Puerto Rico).
76. See for instance, Torruella, The Supreme Court and Puerto Rico, 167-200;
77. Torruella "One Hundred Years of Solitude," 241-250;
78. Helfeld, "How Much of the United States Constitution and Statutes Are Applicable to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico?" 452;
79. Cabranes, "Puerto Rico: Out of the Colonial Closet," 68;
80. Aleinikoff, Semblances of Sovereignty, 77;
81. Fliess, "Puerto Rico's Political Status," 652,639;
82. Lawson and Seidman, The Constitution of Empire, 124-138.
83. Cabranes, "Puerto Rico: Out of the Colonial Closet," 68.
84. See Aleinikoff, Semblances of Sovereignty, 95-121.
85. See also Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903) 23 S.Ct. 216 U.S.
86. On this view in the courts see, Perez de la Cruz v. Crowley Towing and Tramp. Co. (1986), 807 F.2d 1084, 1088 (1st Cir.), cert, denied, 481 U.S. 1050 (1987);
87. United States v. Sanchez (1993), 992 F.2d 1143, 1152-53 (11th Cir.), cert, denied, 510 U.S. 1110 (1994);
88. United States v. Lopez Andino 1164, 1173;
89. and United States v. Rivera Torrez (1987), 826 F.2d 151, 154 (1st Cir.). Aleinikoft Semblances of Sovereignty, 77.
90. United States v. Sanchez. Also quoted in Aleinikoff, Semblances of Sovereignty, 76.
91. Marshall, Constitutional Conventions; Munro, "Laws and Conventions Distinguished";
92. Bogdanor. The Monarchy and the Constitution;
93. Brazier, Ministers of the Crown;
94. and Brazier, Constitutional Practice.
95. 37Tiedeman, The Unwritten Constitution;
96. Bryce, American Commonwealth, 391-407;
97. Wilson. "American Constitutional Conventions," 645;
98. Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States;
99. Horwill, Usages of the American Constitution;
100. Munro, Makers of the Unwritten Constitution, 1-23;
101. Grey, "Do We Have an Unwritten Constitution?" 703-718; Grey, "Origins of the Unwritten Constitution," 843-893;
102. Grey, "The Original Understanding and the Unwritten Constitution"; Sherry, "The Founders' Unwritten Constitution," 1127-1177;
103. Ackerman, We The People, 44-50, 81-130;
104. Strauss, "Common Law Constitutional Interpretation," 877; Whittington, Constitutional Construction; Fallon, "Judicial Legitimacy and the Unwritten Constitution," 119;
105. Fallon, Implementing the Constitution;
106. Foley, The Silence of Constitutions;
107. and Fisher, American Constitutional Law.
108. A.V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 8th ed. (Indianapolis, IN; Liberty Fund, 1885 [1982]).
109. Eugene A. Forsey, The Royal Power of Dissolution of Parliament in the British Commonwealth (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1943).
110. Marshall, Constitutional Conventions, 3, 210.
111. Wheare, The Statute of Westminster and Dominion Status, 6.
112. Fallon, Implementing the Constitution, 112. It may be instructive to note that the total written constitutional documents of the United States include those that exist at the federal, state, and territorial levels.
113. Harold Koh, The National Security Constitution: Sharing Power After the Iran-Contra Affair (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990);
114. Gerhard Casper, "Constitutional Constraints on the Conduct of Foreign and Defense Policy: A Nonjudicial Model," University of Chicago Law Review 43 (Spring 1976): 463-498;
115. G. Edward White, "The Transformation of the Constitutional Regime of Foreign Relations," Virginia Law Review 85 (February 1999): 1-150;
116. Joel R. Paul, "The Geopolitical Constitution: Executive Expediency and Executive Agreements," California Law Review 86 (July 1998): 671-774.
117. Bruce Ackerman, "The Storrs lectures: Discovering the Constitution," Yale Law Journal 93 (May 1984): 1013-1072;
118. Richard Epstein, "The Proper Scope of the Commerce Power," Virginia Law Review 73 (November 1987): 1387-1456;
119. and Fallon, Implementing the Constitution, 115.
120. For examples of this, see Grey, "Do We Have an Unwritten Constitution?" 703-718;
121. Strauss, "Common Law Constitutional Interpretation," 877;
122. Sanford Levinson, Constitutional Faith (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998);
123. Jed Rubenfeld, "Reading the Constitution as Spoken," Yale Law Journal 104 (March 1995): 1119-1186;
124. and Fallon, Implementing the Constitution.
125. The aforementioned three-part assessment of identifying a conventional rule is a modification of Sir Ivor Jennings's tripartite account of the establishment of convention accepted by the Canadian judiciary in 1981. In Sir Ivor's assessment, one can identify a convention if there are precedents, reasons for the rule, and actors who feel themselves to be bound by the rule. Sir W. Ivor Jennings, The Law and the Constitution, 5th ed. (London: University of London Press, 1959), 134-136.
126. See also Marshall, Constitutional Conventions, 10.
127. Marshall, Constitutional Conventions, 169-179.
128. On the conventionally entrenched status of the British dominions, see, for instance, H.V. Evatt. The King and His Dominion Governors, 2nd ed. (London: Frank Cass & Co, Ltd., 1967);
129. Forsey, Royal Power of Dissolution;
130. Wheare, The Statute of Westminster;
131. Stephen Leacock. "Responsible Government in the British Colonial System," American Political Science Review 1 (May 1907): 355-392:
132. Arthur Berriedale Keith, Responsible Government in the Dominions, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon. 1928);
133. Arthur Berriedale Keith, The Governments of the British Empire (London: Macmillan, 1935);
134. Arthur Berriedale Keith, ed., Speeches and Documents on the British Dominions 1918-1931: From Self-Government to National Sovereignty (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1932);
135. Arthur Berriedale Keith, ed., British Colonial Policy, 1763-1917, 2 vols. (London: G. Cumberlege, 1948). The text of the 1931 Statute of Westminster is reprinted in Wheare. The Statute of Westminster, 308-312.
136. Eric Barendt, An Introduction to Constitutional Law (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998), 112.
137. Ibid.
138. Marshall, Constitutional Conventions, 201.
139. For many of the key constitutional documents for the dominions of Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland, including the Letters Patent, Instructions, Commissions, and Dormant Commissions, see Keith, Responsible Government in the Dominions (1912), 1561-1613.
140. Keith, Responsible Government in the Dominions (1928), 1146-1147.
141. One of the Australian constitutional documents, the 1900 Letters Patent, which directly mirrorsin many cases word for word-the other "Letters Patent" of the other dominions, makes this clear. See, for instance, Article IV of the 1900 Australian Letters Patent, reprinted in Keith, Responsible Government in the Dominions (1912), 1570.
142. With the power of disallowance, the monarch (on the advice of British ministers) could disallow (annul) laws passed by the territorial legislature. With respect to the powers of disallowance, see the 1852 New Zealand Act, Section 55; the 1867 British North America Act (Canada), Section 56; the 1900 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, Section 59; and the 1909 South Africa Act, Section 65. See also the Report of the Conference on the Operation of Dominion Legislation and Merchant Shipping Legislation (1929) reprinted in Keith, ed., Speeches and Documents, 175. Under the similar but distinct power of reservation, the dominion's governor-general could choose to not give his assent to a bill duly passed by the dominion legislature and instead bring it before the British monarch, who would decide on its fate with the advice of British ministers. With respect to such legal powers of reservation, see the 1852 New Zealand Act, Sections 55 and 59; the 1867 British North America Act (Canada), Sections 55 and 57; the 1900 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, Sections 58 and 60; the 1909 South Africa Act, Sections 64 and 66; and the Constitution of the Irish Free State, Article 41. See also Arthur Berriedale Keith, "Report of the Conference on the Operation of Dominion Legislation and Merchant Shipping Legislation" in Keith, ed., Speeches and Documents, 173-205.
143. This was set down in the British Parliament's 1865 Colonial Laws Validity Act. See Keith, "Report of the Conference," 183-187.
144. See for instance Article V of the 1900 Australian Letters Patent, reprinted in Keith, Responsible Government in the Dominions (1912), 1570-1571.
145. On such a suggestion see, Fliess, "Puerto Rico's Political Status," 652.
146. Reprinted in Monge, Puerto Rico, 115.
147. House Doc. 435, 82nd Cong., 2nd sess., 4.
148. Report by Hon. Frances P. Bolton and Hon. James P. Richards on the Eighth Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, Committee on Foreign Affairs, 83rd Cong., 2nd sess., (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 26 April 1954), 241. See also Monge, Puerto Rico, 123.
149. See, for instance, Figueroa v. Puerto Rico (1953), 232 F.2d 615,620 (1st Cir.);
150. United States v. Lopez Andino (1987), 831 F.2d 1164 (1st Cir.), cert, denied, 486 U.S. 1034 (1988);
151. United States v. Quinones (1985), 758 F.2d 40, 42 (1st Cir.);
152. United States v. Vega Figueroa (1997), 984 F. Supp. 71.79 (D. Puerto Rico). Leibowitz, Defining Status, 165-185.
153. Rodriguez v. Popular Democratic Party (1982), 457 U.S. 1, 8.
154. Munro, "Laws and Conventions Distinguished," 218; O. Hood Phillips, "Constitutional Conventions: A Conventional Reply," Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law 8 (December 1964): 60-70.
155. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 23.
156. Keith, Governments of the British Empire, 6.
157. While the deeply held principle that Parliament is sovereign is itself a conventional rule, it is the basis for the clear division between convention and strict law in the courts. This deeply held principle is, however, changing to some degree with the application of European human rights legislation.
158. Grey, "Do We Have an Unwritten Constitution?" 703-718.
159. Ibid.
160. Roe v. Wade (1973) 410 U.S. 113, 153.
161. Shapiro v. Thompson (1969) 394 U.S., 618, 630.
162. Grey, "Do We Have an Unwritten Constitution?" 707.
163. Fallon, "Judicial Legitimacy."
164. Ibid.
165. Robert Menedez, Extension of Remarks, U.S. House of Representatives, "On Military Operations in Vieques," 106th Cong., 16 July 1999.
166. On interference by the central government as it pertains to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, see, especially, Leibowitz, Defining Status, 241-286, 318-374, 423-464. On interference by the central government within the Indian Territories,
167. see Aleinikoff, Semblances of Sovereignty, 95-121.
168. United States v. Quinones (1985) 758 F.2d 40 (1st Cir.).
169. Similar arguments apply to Puerto Rico's prohibition of the death penalty, which the U.S. Federal First Circuit Court judged to be applicable to local courts applying local law within Puerto Rico but not to federal courts applying federal law. See U.S. v. Acosta-Martinez (2001), 252 F.3d (1st Cir.).
170. Leibowitz, Defining Status, 175, 210.
171. Ibid., 175.
172. Ibid., 217. Polities joined by a customs union have a common external tariff but no internal tariffs between them.
173. Ibid., 218.
174. Ruth Lapidoth, Autonomy; Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts (Washington DC; United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), 136.
175. See Califano v. Torres (1978), 435 U.S. 1. and Harris v. Rosario (1980), 446 U.S. 651.
176. Aleinikoff, Semblances of Sovereignty, 87-92.
177. For a description of political violence in Puerto Rico, see Monge, Puerto Rico, 93-94, 100, 113-114.
178. On the results of the 1998 plebiscite in which less than 2 percent of voters chose independence, see Aleinikoff, Semblances of Sovereignly, 93.