After the United States acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War in 1898, Americans weren’t sure whether they wanted constitutional rights to “follow the flag.” A series of five Supreme Court rulings from 1901 to 1922, known as the Insular Cases, reflected this ambiguity, as a combination of racist and populist reasoning in the decisions ensured Puerto Rico – relationship with the United States would remain unclear to this day, explained panelists at the Latin American Law Organization spring colloquium March 28.
“The Insular Cases display some of the most notable examples in the history of the Supreme Court in which its decisions interpreting the Constitution evidence an unabashed reflection of contemporaneous politics,”kj said Judge Juan Torruella of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Torruella is the first Puerto Rican appointed to a federal appellate court. “The Insular Cases in effect translated the political dispute about the acquisition of foreign territories into the vocabulary of the Constitution, with the Supreme Court eventually echoing the popular sentiment of the day.”
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