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A Constitutional Theory Of Territoriality: The Case Of Puerto Rico, Joel Colón-Ríos, Yaniv Roznai

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article offers an analysis of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States that, unlike most of the existing literature, goes beyond discussions of the jurisprudence of U.S. courts and avoids providing merely descriptive or justificatory accounts. Using the tools of constitutional theory, we seek to describe the nature of what we call the “basic structure of territoriality,” the way that structure reproduces itself, and the possibility of its replacement. The basic structure of territoriality, we argue, is comprised by ten fundamental legal rules and five principles. Although those principles are not legally enforceable, they inform in important …