Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution

In this study of American imperialism, legal scholars address the problem of the US territories. Foreign in a Domestic Sense aims to redefine the boundaries of constitutional scholarship. More than four million United States citizens live in five unincorporated US territories. The inhabitants of these vestiges of an American empire are denied full representation in Congress and cannot vote in presidential elections. Focusing on the largest and most populous of the territories, Puerto Rico, Foreign in a Domestic Sense sheds light on the United States’ unfinished colonial experiment and its legacy of racially rooted imperialism, while insisting on the centrality of these marginal regions in any serious treatment of American constitutional history. For 100 years, Puerto Ricans have struggled to define their place in a nation that neither wants them nor wants to let them go, caught in a debate too politicized to yield meaningful answers. Meanwhile, doubts concerning the constitutionality of keeping colonies have languished on the margins of mainstream scholarship, overlooked by scholars outside the island and ignored by the nation at large. This book does more than simply fill an omission in the study of race, cultural identity, and the Constitution; it also aims to make a contribution to the study of American federalism, serves as a foundation for substantive debate on Puerto Rico’s status, and meets a need for dialogue on territorial status between the mainland and the territories.