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UNITED STATES v. VAELLO MADERO 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

ensuing peace treaty signed in 1898, the United States took 
possession  of  Puerto  Rico,  Guam,  and  the  Philippines.
Treaty  of  Paris,  Arts.  1–3,  Dec.  10,  1898,  30  Stat.  1755–
1756. 

But these acquisitions, hard on the heels of the annexa-
tion of Hawaii, soon ignited a fierce debate.  Some argued
that our republican traditions prevented the United States 
from governing distant possessions as subservient colonies 
without regard to the Constitution.  Others sought to devise 
new theories by which Congress could permanently rule the 
country’s new acquisitions as a European power might, un-
restrained by domestic law.  See Cabranes 395. 

Leading members of the legal academy provided influen-
tial support for those in the second camp.  Their work cul-
minated in a series of articles in the Harvard Law Review 
in  1899.  Christopher  Langdell  argued  that  the  Bill  of 
Rights  was  “so  peculiarly  . . .  English  that  an  immediate 
and compulsory application of [those rights] to ancient and 
thickly settled Spanish colonies would furnish . . . proof of
our  unfitness  to  govern  dependencies,  or  deal  with  alien
races.”  The Status of Our New Territories, 12 Harv. L. Rev. 
365,  386  (1899).    James  Bradley  Thayer  contended  that 
“there is no lack of power in our nation . . . to govern these
islands as colonies, substantially as England might govern
them.”  Our  New  Possessions,  12  Harv.  L.  Rev.  464,  467 
(1899).  Abbott  Lawrence  Lowell  submitted  that,  “apart 
from treaty or legislation, possessions acquired by conquest 
or cession do not become a part of the United States,” and 
“constitutional limitations . . . do not apply.”  The Status of 
Our New Possessions:  A Third View, 13 Harv. L. Rev. 155, 
176  (1899).  Such  rules,  he  said,  “are  inapplicable  except 
among  a  people  whose  social  and  political  evolution  has
been consonant with our own.”  Ibid. 

The debate over American colonialism made its first ap-
pearance  in  this  Court  in  the  form  of  a  tax  dispute  in 
Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244 (1901).  Pursuant to the