Puerto Rico: Cultural Nation, American Colony

Abstract

A study of Puerto Rico's century-old legal relationship with the United States, and how it constructs Puerto Ricans as legal and social second-class citizens because of their cultural nationhood. The discriminatory treatment conflicts with contemporary notions of justice and morality in postmodern political and legal philosophy. The article articulates a framework for legal reform that is consistent with a new progressive theoretical construct of a pluralistic and communitarian form of liberalism.

Keywords: Constitutional Law, LatCrit Theory, Critical Race Theory, Colonialism, Territories, Law and Culture, Law and Society