Michael Ramsey’s “The Originalist Case Against the Insular Cases”
In the Insular Cases of the early twentieth century, the Supreme Court ruled that much of the Constitution does not apply to America’s “unincorporated” overseas territories, such as Puerto Rico. Thus, the federal government could rule the people there without being constrained by a variety of constitutional rights. In 2022, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch urged the Court to overrule these decisions.
Prominent originalist legal scholar Michael Ramsey has an important new article explaining why Gorsuch was right. Here is the abstract:
Concurring in United States v. Vaello Madero, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the Insular Cases are contrary to the Constitution’s original meaning and should be overruled. The Supreme Court’s decisions in the Insular Cases, which created a second-class constitutional status for U.S. overseas territories, have also been criticized by leading originalist scholars such as Professors Gary Lawson and Michael Paulsen. However, there is no fully developed scholarly assessment of the Insular Cases from an originali
Article from Reason.com
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