Scholars and the Politics of Puerto Rico’s Constitutional Status

Joel I. Colón-Ríos

Victoria University of Wellington

For the first time in years, Puerto Rico’s (PR) relationship with the United States has become a live political issue in the US Congress. Two bills, each seeking an end to PR’s territorial status, have been presented. The first bill, The Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Act (SAA) would trigger a referendum in which Puerto Rican electors would be asked the following question: “Shall Puerto Rico be immediately admitted into the Union as a State?”. If a majority answers in the affirmative, the island would become the 51st state of the U.S.  

The second bill, the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act (SDA), which was presented in response to the SAA, would put in place a process that involves the calling of a ‘Status Convention’ - a mechanism long supported by the Puerto Rican Bar Association and all political movements in the island, except for the pro-statehood party. The (elected) delegates to the Status Convention would determine the ‘self-determination’ options to be included in a referendum that would be conducted in a ranked-choice voting format. The ‘self-determination’ option favored by the majority would then be presented to Congress, which would (ideally) ratify it. If Congress refuses to do so, the Status Convention may meet again and send the same or another ‘self-determination’ option to the following Congress.  

In an interesting, and to my knowledge unprecedented development, US and Puerto Rican law academics have actively entered the debate, writing letters in support and against these bills. The first letter was signed by 44 US law professors, including several well-known US constitutional law scholars. It expresses “strong opposition” to the SDA and “strong support” for the SAA. It argues that, under US constitutional law, the only “real” self-determination options, that is, the only options that would end PR’s territorial status, are statehood and independence. Given that in a 2020 referendum Puerto Ricans voted for the former, the letter argues, making an offer of statehood is in order.  

That letter prompted an energic response by all professors in PR’s ABA’s approved law schools teaching constitutional law or related courses, who in a second letter refer to the “highly political content in the various assumptions ingrained” in the first letter, and maintain that while it contains “important arguments in favour of statehood”, the letter seems to have been signed under the (incorrect) “assumption that the people of PR have already made a definitive decision and that there are no other options available”. 

The letter in support of the SAA, while understandable from a strictly US-centric political point of view (where Puerto Rican statehood is largely understood as a progressive cause), is problematic from an academic perspective because it seems to be based in a partial understanding of the history and the political context of PR. My aim here is to show that a simple offer of statehood overlooks some of the main complexities around the question of PR’s status and the SAA may in fact work against PR’s self-determination. In so doing, I will not engage in a detailed account of the development of the PR-US relationship, or the judicial decisions about it, which I (and many others), have discussed elsewhere. 

Puerto Rico’s Constitutional Status 

From a US constitutional law perspective, PR is a US unincorporated territory, a category created by the US Supreme Court in the early 20th century, shortly after the US invasion of the island in 1898. The power of the US Congress to legislate for the island is derived from the Territorial Clause of Article IV of the US Constitution, which states: “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States…” (Territorial Clause). Under the current territorial status, Puerto Ricans living on the island, although US citizens and routinely subject to US federal laws, do not have the right to vote in US federal elections. 

A key development in the US-PR relationship took place in 1950, when the US Congress adopted the Public Law 600 (the Act), which was submitted to popular approval in the island. The Act authorised the Puerto Rican legislature to call a Constitutional Convention that would draft a constitution for approval by the US Congress. The Act’s preamble states: “Fully recognizing the principle of government by consent, this Act is now adopted in the nature of a compact” (emphasis added), a sentence that has caused much debate (and confusion) in discussions about PR’s status.  

Importantly, under the Act, the application of US federal laws in the island would continue. Moreover, in the event of a ‘no’ vote in the Public Law 600 referendum, the relationship existing at the time - as regulated by the U.S. Jones Act of 1917 (which for all practical purposes served as the island’s constitution) – would remain intact. A large majority (76.5%, on a 65% turnout) of the Puerto Rican electorate voted in favour of the Act in a 1951 referendum. A Constitutional Convention was convened and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was drafted. The draft constitution was approved by the electors (81.9% in favour, on a 59% turnout) in a referendum in 1952. A few months later, US Congress conditioned its approval to the condition that certain changes were made to the text, such as the removal of a section recognising a set of social and economic rights and the addition of an eternity clause to the proposed amendment rule which entrenched the territorial status.   

Since then, the status of PR has been referred to as ‘the commonwealth status’. Although the events in 1952 were at the time described by many as an exercise of PR’s right to self-determination (based on a ‘compact’ between two peoples), in the last few decades a new consensus has begun to emerge in PR that whatever happened in 1952, the island’s subjection to US laws (as well as to the decisions of its courts) creates an undemocratic relationship of subordination. In 2016, this was exemplified in a dramatic way: in light of PR’s inability to pay its public debt, the US Congress adopted a law that gave an unelected entity (a board comprised of 7 individuals appointed by the US President) extensive powers over the island’s government, making ineffective (in practice) key provisions of the 1952 Constitution. 

Status Referendums 

The emerging consensus about the need of change is exemplified by the multiple referendums organized by the island’s government. From 1967 to present there have been six status referendums. None have had binding effects and all of them, except the first one, were promoted by pro-statehood governments on the island. Table 1 shows a summary of the results and voting turnout of the referendums that have been held between 1967 and 2020 based on the available options on the ballot. As will be seen, these referendums have been affected by a variety of factors, from internal political battles to outright intervention by the US government, influencing what is to be asked and how to ask it.  

From this table, one can appreciate three main things. Firstly, support for the commonwealth status has decreased since 1967 (where electors were presented with three different options, including a potentially enhanced commonwealth status, which included an “authorization to develop the commonwealth…toward the maximum level of self-government compatible… with US citizenship). Secondly, support for statehood increased during that same period. Thirdly, support for Puerto Rican sovereignty in some form of association with the US has increased substantially in the last decade. 

Some context is necessary to understand these developments. By the end of the 1990s, statehood (and some independence) supporters came to the view that any commonwealth option, regardless of the name or description given by its supporters (e.g. ‘enhanced’ commonwealth), would keep PR under the Territorial Clause. Consequently, in the 1998 referendum,  voters were not given the option of voting for the ‘commonwealth’ status (or for an ‘enhanced’ commonwealth), but simply to keep PR as a ‘US territory subject to the authority of the U.S. Congress’. Though such a description of the status quo was accurate from a legal perspective, from an electoral point of view it was extremely unattractive. Not surprisingly, commonwealth supporters saw the exclusion of a ‘commonwealth’ option as an attempt to produce an artificial majority in favour of statehood. The party supporting the commonwealth option thus led a (successful) campaign in favour of the ‘none of the above’ option. The 1998 referendum was also the first time that free association (defined in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 1541(XV)) was presented as an alternative, receiving only 0.3% of the vote. (Under U.S. law, free association is a legal and non-territorial alternative, and the US has several free association treaties with former colonies). 

The 2012 referendum, unlike the previous ones, included two questions. The first one asked the electors whether they wished PR to maintain its current territorial status. The second asked them to choose between three ‘non-territorial’ alternatives: statehood, independence, or free association. In the first question, 53.97% of the electors (on a 79% turnout) voted ‘no’. In the second question, statehood obtained 61.16% of the vote, independence 5.49%, and free association 33.34%. This was the first-time statehood was supported by most of the electorate, and also the first time that a large number of voters (almost 40%) expressed their support for the island becoming a sovereign country (either as an independent nation or in free association with the US).  

The 2017 referendum, as initially conceived by the pro-statehood government, would have fully excluded the status quo option (under the basis that it had been rejected in the 2012 referendum) and ask electors to choose only between statehood and ‘free association/independence’ (if this option prevailed, a second referendum would take place between independence and free association). Importantly, the proposed referendum resulted in an unprecedented pro-sovereignty coalition (including influential members of the party that had traditionally supported the commonwealth status) in support of the free association/independence option. However, shortly before the 2017 referendum took place, the US Department of Justice conditioned the use of federal funds in the electoral event on the inclusion of the status quo as an alternative. Consequently, the Puerto Rican government included a current (territorial) as an option, which resulted in an electoral boycott by the  pro-sovereignty coalition and all political parties except the pro-statehood one. The result: the statehood option received more than 97% of the vote on a historically low 23% turnout. 

The 2020 referendum presented electors with a statehood ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. No other alternatives were included, given the ‘overwhelming’ support received by statehood in 2017. The ‘yes’ prevailed with 52.52% of the vote on a low (by historical standards) 54.72% turnout.  

Why is the Letter in Support of the SAA Problematic? 

This is the context in which the SAA was proposed. In PR, most of its supporters belong to the right-wing of the island’s political spectrum (in fact, one of the bill’s main co-sponsors in the US Congress, Puerto Rican Jennifer Gonzalez, is an avid Trump supporter). This is not surprising. While Puerto Rican statehood is generally seen as a progressive cause in the US (i.e. as a means of enfranchising US citizens in PR), that is not the case in PR. In fact, statehood is not even considered as a decolonization alternative by a large part of the island’s progressive groups (who see PR as a Latin American nation and statehood as the culmination of more than 100 years of colonial rule). 

Nonetheless, what makes the letter in support of the SAA problematic is not its support for statehood. It is, rather, that it ignores the context surrounding the Puerto Rican status debate, ultimately reducing it to (1) a controversial empirical conclusion that “Puerto Ricans have publicly and officially asked for statehood” and (2) a controversial legal argument that the only legal and non-territorial self-determination options for the island are statehood and independence. The problem with (1) should be clear from the previous account: the referendums in which statehood prevailed were not seen as legitimate mechanisms of self-determination by large sectors of the population (which explains the historically low turnouts) and the decision of presenting the electors with a statehood yes/no question without including any other option in 2020 is, at best, questionable. Moreover, while support for statehood has increased considerably since 1967, so has support for PR becoming a sovereign country. If, as the letter’s signatories believe, the only real self-determination options are statehood and independence, perhaps the appropriate mode of proceeding should be a US sponsored statehood or independence referendum. Otherwise, under the SAA, if the ‘no’ vote prevails, PR would remain a US territory. Should the latter be the case, how could one argue that the SAA is facilitating PR’s self-determination? 

The legal argument presented in the letter is controversial not because it is necessarily incorrect, but because it implicitly treats free association as a form of independence. The distinction between independence/free association is of huge political importance in PR for at least two reasons. First, as discussed in both letters, the issue of US citizenship is key in the debate about PR’s status. Many in PR believe that a free association treaty, unlike traditional independence, could include provisions allowing Puerto Ricans born in the island to maintain US citizenship or at least the right to live and work in the US. Second, while not many Puerto Ricans are willing to support independence – partly as a result of decades of political repression against the independence movement– the same is not true of free association (see Table 1, 2012 referendum). One of the merits of the Status Convention proposed by the SDA is that it would allow delegates elected in PR to discuss, among the other non-territorial options, what a free association treaty with the US could look like. 

Overlooking these contextual issues when assuming positions on the Puerto Rican status debate entails a risk of oversimplification. It may lead one to support courses of action that are in direct conflict with the very possibility of self-determination. This is why the letter in support of the SAA is problematic and why the Puerto Rican constitutional law professors were right to denounce it. 

Joel I. Colón-Ríos is a Professor of Law at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. 

Suggested citation: Joel I. Colón-Ríos, ‘Scholars and the Politics of Puerto Rico’s Constitutional Status’ IACL-AIDC Blog (06 May 2021) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/2021-posts/2021/05/06-puerto-ricos-constitutional-status.