Series of Supreme Court cases determining the constitutional status—incorporated or unincorporated—of territorial possessions and dependencies outside of the continental United States.
As the nineteenth century ended, the United States embarked on a bold policy of overseas expansionism. The United States originally acquired territories like Hawaii, Guam, the Philippine Islands, and American Samoa in the Pacific, as well as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, for strategic purposes. In the case of the Pacific islands, Congress determined that such areas would serve as bases for the development of burgeoning American commerce with countries in the Far East. The United States acquired these territories at about the same time: Hawaii was annexed in 1898; the Philippine Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam were added as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898; American Samoa was added through a treaty with Great Britain and Germany in 1899; and the Virgin Islands were bought from Denmark in 1917. Collectively, these acquisitions became known as the Insular Possessions.
The new overseas possessions ultimately posed an important constitutional question: Can Congress exercise jurisdiction over American citizens living in these overseas possessions within the framework of the Constitution? In a series of rulings, the Supreme Court held that such possessions fall into two classifications: incorporated, in which all territories remain bound by the provisions of the Constitution; and unincorporated, in which certain territories are “bound only by certain ‘fundamental’ provisions of the same.” The main issue was whether the revenue clauses of the Constitution and all rights pertaining to U.S. citizens extended to the newly acquired possessions and their inhabitants. In early 1901, in De Lima v. Bidwell, the Supreme Court held that “upon the ratification of the treaty of peace with Spain, Puerto Rico ceased to exist as a foreign country and became a territory of the United States, and that duties were no longer collectible upon merchandise brought from that island.” However, on May 27,1901, in Downes v. Bidwell—the key case in connection with the Insular Possessions—the justices ruled “that the provisions insuring jury trial and uniformity of tariff duties are not fundamental, but that the guarantee against deprivation of life, liberty and property without due process of law is fundamental and hence applicable in all the possessions of the United States.” The Court held that certain fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution applied to all territories held by the United States, but it said many other provisions of the Constitution did not apply to possessions not “definitely incorporated as an integral part of the United States.” Inhabitants of unincorporated territories lacked all the rights and privileges of American citizens, enjoying only those fundamental rights derived from natural law.
The Supreme Court rulings determined that the rights of inhabitants of the Insular Possessions included those relating to life, liberty, and property but that these inhabitants did not necessarily qualify under the constitutional provision “that all duties, imposts, and excises should be uniform throughout the United States.” That is, they enjoyed the rights guaranteed under the constitution but, except in the case of U.S. possessions such as Puerto Rico and Guam, new territories such as Cuba would not be allowed to ship goods into the United States without paying duties. In Hawaii v. Mankichi (1903), the Court held that Hawaii and Alaska were incorporated territories. In Dorr v. United States (1904), the Court ruled that the Philippine Islands were unincorporated. Interestingly, despite passage of the Organic Act of 1917 granting U.S. citizenship to the people of Puerto Rico, the Court reasoned in Puerto Rico v. Tapia (1918) and Balzac v. People of Puerto Rico (1922) that the possession be classified an unincorporated territory. For commercial and strategic reasons, the Supreme Court backed the United States policy of overseas expansion while granting carte blanche privileges to certain territories and not others.
The Insular Cases provided a convenient way out of a situation that the Constitution did not address (that is, American expansionism) and enabled the United States to maintain its commercial and territorial expansion. Justice Henry B. Brown best expressed the Court’s position by stating, “A false step at this time might be fatal to the development of what Chief Justice Marshall called the American empire.”
