The Perils of Politics in the Scholarly Debate on Puerto Rico’s Constitutional Status

Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus

Columbia Law School

Joel I. Colón-Ríos’s recent blog “Scholars and the Politics of Puerto Rico’s Constitutional Status” makes a contribution to the latest round of debate over Puerto Rican decolonization. Professor Colón-Ríos takes aim at a letter to U.S. congressional leadership from a group of legal and constitutional scholars supporting the Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Act and opposing the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act, both currently pending in the U.S. Congress. He takes sides with a response to the letter by a group of Puerto Rico-based constitutional law scholars. As the author of the original letter, a blog explaining its historical and political context (submitted for the legislative record when I testified at a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources; Spanish version here), and a reply to the Puerto Rico-based scholars’ response — and as a Puerto Rican raised on the island from my infancy through high school and steeped in this debate since I was a child — I appreciate the opportunity to engage Colón-Ríos’s arguments.  

The Statehood Admission Act (SAA) responds to a referendum held in Puerto Rico last November in which statehood won with 52.52 percent of the vote. It provides for the island’s admission into the Union as a state conditioned on a second referendum confirming the result. The Self-Determination Act (SDA) ignores the November referendum. Instead, it recognizes Puerto Rico’s inherent right to hold a constitutional convention to define self-determination options, sets forth an elaborate plan for one, and provides for a referendum among the options it would produce. As I explain below, our letter favors the SAA because we believe that an offer of statehood is the right response to the majority vote for it and that by making Puerto Rico’s admission contingent on a second referendum, the SAA gives Puerto Rican voters the first and last word on their future. 

Colón-Ríos makes three basic arguments. First, he claims that our letter reflects a misguided “US-centric” perspective, which wrongly sees statehood as a progressive cause. Second, he criticizes our “controversial argument that the only legal and non-territorial status options for Puerto Rico are statehood and independence,” arguing that we should have identified free association as a distinct option. Third, he criticizes our “controversial empirical conclusion that ‘Puerto Ricans have publicly and officially asked for statehood’” and, relatedly, takes issue with the SAA on the ground that “a simple offer of statehood overlooks some of the main complexities around the question of PR’s status.” I address these arguments in turn. 

Does our letter reflect a misguided “US-centric” perspective, which wrongly sees statehood as a progressive cause? 

The claim that our letter reflects a US-centric perspective finds support at the outset in Colón-Ríos’s seemingly innocuous statement that it was signed by “44 US law professors.” It was actually signed by 47 law professors. The correction might seem trivial, but as the modifier “US” reveals, the omission was not a typo. Instead, Colón-Ríos left out the three Puerto Rico-based law professors who signed it, in an apparent effort to frame the disagreement in Puerto Rico-versus-United States terms: as if no Puerto Rican did or could agree with our letter. To be accurate, then: our letter was signed by 47 legal and constitutional scholars, not 44. Three of them are Puerto Rico-based. Another two (if we must) are Puerto Rican scholars based stateside, myself included. 

Building on the claim that our letter is “US-centric,” Colón-Ríos explains that “[w]hile 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,” where most progressives, he tells us, oppose statehood because they see it as the culmination of U.S. colonial rule. It is true that many of Puerto Rico’s most vocal progressives oppose statehood. They prefer independence. It is also true that statehood would enfranchise the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico. Progressive opposition to statehood does not make Puerto Rican enfranchisement any less progressive. All it does is suggest that the status debate within Puerto Rico is complicated, which it is, and that statehood cuts across ideological lines, which it does. Colón-Ríos goes the extra mile to equate statehood with conservativism, taking care to point out that Puerto Rico’s current non-voting Representative in the House, who supports statehood, is a Republican. Yet he neglects to mention that four out of the island’s six pro-statehood governors, including the current one, have been Democrats. 

These labels actually shed little light on statehood. But the more serious problem with the unsubtle message in Colón-Ríos’s subtle omissions is that the admittedly lopsided representation of Puerto Ricans in the exchange of letters that gave rise to his blog does reflect an ugly reality of Puerto Rican academic institutions. The island’s universities, which like their mainland counterparts serve as the intellectual home to progressive intellectuals, have undeniably been dominated by statehood opponents since mid-twentieth century. While Colón-Ríos does not delve into this particular complexity, anyone familiar with Puerto Rican history knows that pro-statehood Puerto Rican academics are a rare breed because the island’s academic institutions have long been an inhospitable environment, to put it mildly, for anyone who dared express support for statehood. Think about it: by every relevant measure (ordinary elections, status plebiscites, polling on status preferences), statehood has had the support of at least half of Puerto Rico’s population since the early 1970s. Yet one cannot find a single law professor on the island who identifies primarily as a constitutional scholar and openly admits to supporting statehood (the three Puerto Rico-based law professors who signed our letter do not identify primarily as constitutional scholars). This bizarre reality does not reflect badly on statehood. Nor does it reflect badly on the views of the Puerto Rican legal scholars who signed the letter responding to ours. But it does reflect badly on the intellectual culture of Puerto Rican academic institutions. It is certainly not a figure one should brag about. 

As a U.S.-based, Puerto Rican, pro-statehood (and, as it happens, progressive) constitutional scholar, I am fortunate to be able to give voice to the arguments in support of the full and equal enfranchisement that statehood would bring to the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico without having to worry about what it could do to my career. When I do so, I like to stick to the merits. 

What are Puerto Rico’s self-determination options? 

Our letter takes the position that the only constitutional, non-territorial options for Puerto Rico are statehood and independence. The first half of that statement — that the options must be constitutional and non-territorial — commands universal assent, and Colón-Ríos rightly does not take issue with it. It goes without saying that Puerto Rico’s options must be constitutional, since, as we say in our letter, “neither Congress nor Puerto Rico has the power to implement an unconstitutional option.” And everyone agrees that in order to decolonize, Puerto Rico must cease to be a U.S. territory, for two reasons. First, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth and subject to U.S. sovereignty and most federal laws, yet they lack voting representation in Congress and the presidential vote. Second, under the Territory Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Art. IV, §3, cl.2), Congress exercises unilateral control over how much self-government Puerto Rico enjoys. In other words, territorial status is colonial. Since the goal of self-determination is to decolonize, territorial status cannot fulfill it. 

It is the second half of the statement — that the only (constitutional and non-territorial) options for Puerto Rico are statehood and independence — that troubles Colón-Ríos, who objects that we did not expressly include free association, which has growing support on the island. Our letter does not list free association separately because it is a form of independence. Despite his objection, Colón-Ríos does not deny this. Instead, he elaborates on his complaint by observing that “U.S. citizenship is key in the debate about PR’s status” and that many Puerto Ricans “believe” that free association, “unlike traditional independence,” could provide birthright U.S. citizenship in Puerto Rico “or at least the right to live and work in the US.” 

These observations, while true, do not challenge the proposition that free association is a form of independence, let alone refute it. Instead, Colón-Ríos’s point here seems to be that we should have included free association because Puerto Ricans across the political spectrum, whether for or against statehood, care deeply about ensuring U.S. citizenship for their posterity, and many of them believe free association might come with birthright U.S. citizenship. Ironically, this amounts to an argument in support of our decision not to identify free association as a distinct option. To do so would imply that a free association treaty could guarantee birthright U.S. citizenship in Puerto Rico prospectively, when it could not. Although a treaty of free association could (though, it must be said, almost certainly would not) provide birthright U.S. citizenship for persons born in Puerto Rico, the United States would remain free to renegotiate the arrangement so as to cease granting birthright citizenship. Persons already born in Puerto Rico would retain their U.S. citizenship, but free association cannot guarantee birthright U.S. citizenship for their posterity. Puerto Ricans should understand this, and implying that free association is not independence does not help. 

Should Congress offer statehood to Puerto Rico? 

Colón-Ríos complains that our letter “reduces” the status debate to the “controversial empirical conclusion that ‘Puerto Ricans have publicly and officially asked for statehood.’” In his view, the November referendum was “questionable” because the decision to offer a yes-no vote on statehood was purportedly based on statehood wins in two previous plebiscites of dubious validity. Taking issue with the SAA’s adoption of the yes-no mechanism, he adds that it undermines self-determination because if “no” wins, Puerto Rico remains a territory. 

In support of his challenge to the earlier plebiscites, Colón-Ríos offers an account of Puerto Rico’s six votes on status between 1967 and 2020. While his account is informative, it has little bearing on our letter’s position that the November 2020 referendum was a legitimate and accurate indication that a majority of voting Puerto Ricans favor statehood. The validity of a yes-no vote does not depend on whether the option on the ballot won an earlier vote. As for the November referendum, the law providing for it was enacted by Puerto Rico’s duly elected legislature. All three major political parties on the island registered to campaign for their favored options, which they then did. The island’s two minor parties did not endorse either option but individual candidates within those parties publicly favored one or the other option. Voters were free to cast a ballot. Anyone who opposed statehood could vote “no.” Colón-Ríos remarks that the referendum was “promoted by [the] pro-statehood government,” insinuating bias, but a charge of bias against a duly elected government for supporting statehood is misplaced. A majority of legislators at the time were pro-statehood precisely because their constituents support statehood. They were voted into office in no small measure so that they would use their legislative power to promote it. It is no embarrassment to an elected majority government to be caught in the act of keeping its promises. Colón-Ríos’s remark also forgets that an early proponent of a yes-no vote on statehood was none other than the leader of the island’s major anti-statehood party, who a few years earlier called for it in testimony submitted to the U.N. Special Committee on Decolonization, describing it as a “true and unimpeachable” method for determining the will of the people. In short, our view is that the November referendum produced a legitimate and accurate majority for statehood, and that Congress should respond to that majority vote with an offer of statehood. Even then, as we make clear, it was crucial to our support for the SAA that it merely offers statehood, leaving it to Puerto Rican voters to accept or reject the offer. 

That leaves the argument that the SAA itself undermines Puerto Rican self-determination because a victory for the “no” option in a second referendum would leave Puerto Rico a territory. Oddly, Colón-Ríos does not raise the same objection with respect to the SDA, but to be consistent he should, since his own description of it reveals exactly the same problem. As he explains, after the convention, Puerto Ricans would hold a referendum offering a ranked choice vote: “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 other words, if Congress declines to ratify the result of the referendum under the SDA, Puerto Rico remains a territory. Thus Colón-Ríos’s complaint about the SAA applies with equal force to the SDA. If anything, the SAA comes out ahead on this score because at least a “yes” vote would lead to admission without further congressional action: Under the SAA, a victory for statehood would require the President of the United States to proclaim Puerto Rico’s admission into the Union as a state within one year. 

No one wants Puerto Rico to remain a territory. Everyone agrees on this much. Everyone also agrees that Puerto Ricans must choose their own future. But Congress has a role in this process as well. The painful reality is that no colony can decolonize by itself. In the wake of a majority vote for statehood, Congress should offer statehood to Puerto Rico. If Puerto Ricans decline it, Congress should pave the way for their independence, and bring a long-overdue end to the island’s colonial ordeal. 

Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus is the George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia Law School. She is an expert on U.S.-Puerto Rico relations, and a Puerto Rican. 

Suggested citation: Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus, ‘The Perils of Politics in the Scholarly Debate on Puerto Rico’s Constitutional Status’ IACL-AIDC Blog (25 May 2021) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/2021-posts/2021/05/25the-perils-of-politics-in-the-scholarly-debate-on-puerto-ricos-constitutional-status.