Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1334_8m58.pdf
Page Number: 52

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

15 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring in judgment 

question or change the status of the Commonwealth”).  In-
deed, shortly after Congress approved the Puerto Rico Con-
stitution,  federal  officials  expressly  represented  to  the 
United  Nations  that  the  compact  was  of  a  “bilateral  na-
ture,” such that its “terms [could] be changed only by com-
mon consent.”  F. Bolton, U. S. Rep. to the Gen. Assembly,
Statement  to  U. N.  Committee  IV  (Trusteeship)  (Nov.  3,
1953), reprinted in 29 Dept. State Bull. 802, 804 (1953); see
also  Press  Release  No.  1741,  U. S.  Mission  to  the  United 
Nations, Statement by M. Sears, U. S. Rep. in the Comm. 
on  Information  From  Non-Self  Governing  Territories  2 
(Aug.  28,  1953)  (“[A]  compact  . . .  is  far  stronger  than  a
treaty” because it “cannot be denounced by either party un-
less it has the permission of the other”).3 

All  of  this  presses  up  against  broader  questions  about 
Congress’ power under the Territories Clause of Article IV, 

—————— 

3 In opting to proceed with Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth endeavor by 
way  of  compact,  Public  Law  600  was  not  entirely  without  precedent.
When Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance prior to Ratification
to govern the newly acquired Northwest Territory, it provided for a cat-
alog  of  fundamental  rights,  styled  as  “articles  of  compact  between  the
original  States  and  the  people  and  States  in  the  said  territory”  that 
would “forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent.”  Act of 
Aug. 7, 1789, 1 Stat. 52, n. (a) (reproducing the Northwest Ordinance of 
1787).  That understanding of a compact between the Federal Govern-
ment and the Territories was the only extant precedent for the compact
language in Public Law 600, and proponents of Public Law 600 were vo-
cal in their reliance on the Northwest Ordinance as a model.  See Lawson 
& Sloane, The Constitutionality of Decolonization by Associated State-
hood: Puerto Rico’s Legal Status Reconsidered, 50 Boston College L. Rev. 
1123, 1149, n. 142 (2009) (prior to Public Law 600, “[t]he term ‘compact’ 
. . . had seldom appeared in U. S. law,” with the exception of the North-
west  Ordinance  and  subsequent  organic  statutes  modeled  after  the 
Northwest  Ordinance);  J.  Trías  Monge,  Puerto  Rico:  The  Trials  of  the 
Oldest  Colony  in  the  World  111  (1997)  (discussing  debate  among  the  
drafters of Public Law 600 about whether to adopt the precise compact 
language in the Northwest Ordinance).