United States Supreme Court
The unanimous opinion of the Court was delivered by Chief Justice Taft. The Chief Justice argued that although the Jones Act had granted citizenship to Puerto Ricans, it had not incorporated Puerto Rico into the Union. That is, although Puerto Rico had been under the control of the United States since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the territory had not been designated for ultimate statehood, and Congress could determine which parts of the Constitution would apply. Taft distinguished Puerto Rico from the territory in the Alaska purchase, acquired from Russia in 1867, which had been held to be incorporated in Rasmussen v. United States. Thus, particular constitutional provisions were applied based on location, rather than on citizenship.
Taft's grounds for denying jury trial specifically echoed earlier Insular Cases reasoning. He argued that because Puerto Rico had been governed by Spanish civil law for four hundred years before American acquisition, the inhabitants would be unprepared for jury service. Taft argued that locals should be able to determine their own laws:
Congress has thought that a people like the Filipinos, or the Porto Ricans, trained to a complete judicial system which knows no juries, living in compact and ancient communities, with definitely formed customs and political conceptions, should be permitted themselves to determine how far they wish to adopt this institution of Anglo-Saxon origin, and when. —258 U.S. 298, 310Toward the end of the opinion, the court uses "language that would lead to perpetual litigation in an effort to clarify the rights of the American citizens of Puerto Rico:"
The guaranties of certain fundamental personal rights declared in the Constitution, as, for instance, that no person could be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, had from the beginning full application in the Philippines and Porto Rico, and, as this guaranty is one of the must fruitful in causing litigation in our own country, provision was naturally made for similar controversy in Porto Rico. —258 U.S. 298, 312-313The court leaves unresolved the exact "personal rights" that were so "fundamental" that they would extend to American citizens in Puerto Rico.
Read more about this topic: Balzac V. Porto Rico
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, supreme and/or court:
“Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)
“Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante’s scheme, Limbo is to Hell.”
—Irving Layton (b. 1912)
“The Constitution and the laws are supreme and the Union indissoluble.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)