Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-303_6khn.pdf
Page Number: 28.0

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

5 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

See, e.g., Hawaii v. Mankichi, 190 U. S. 197, 215–216 (1903) 
(opinion  of  Brown,  J.);  id.,  at  218–219  (White,  J.,  concur-
ring);  Cf.  S.  Laughlin,  The  Burger  Court  and  the  United 
States  Territories,  36  U.  Fla.  L.  Rev.  755,  773  (1984) 
(“[W]hile Justice White had won the battle over which doc-
trine should nominally prevail, Justice Brown had won the
war”).

Even the right to trial by jury, the Court concluded, was
not fundamental enough to apply in unincorporated Terri-
tories like Puerto Rico.  Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U. S. 298, 
306, 308–310 (1922).  It did not matter to the Court that, by 
the  time  it  reached  the  question,  Congress  had  already 
granted Puerto Ricans U. S. citizenship.  See Act of Mar. 2, 
1917, § 5, 39 Stat. 953.  In the Court’s estimation, the “lo-
cality [was] determinative of the application of the Consti-
tution, . . . not the status of the people who live in it.”  Bal-
zac, 258 U. S., at 309.  And, on the Court’s account, Puerto 
Rico’s “localities” included “compact and ancient communi-
ties” that had not yet developed the “impartial attitude” or
“conscious duty of participation” required of citizens by the
“Anglo-Saxon” jury trial.  Id., at 310. 

II 

The  flaws  in  the  Insular  Cases  are  as  fundamental  as 
they are shameful.  Nothing in the Constitution speaks of
“incorporated”  and  “unincorporated”  Territories.    Nothing
in it extends to the latter only certain supposedly “funda-
mental”  constitutional  guarantees.    Nothing  in  it  author-
izes judges to engage in the sordid business of segregating
Territories and the people who live in them on the basis of
race, ethnicity, or religion.

The Insular Cases can claim support in academic work of
the period, ugly racial stereotypes, and the theories of social
Darwinists.  But they have no home in our Constitution or
its original understanding.  In this country, the federal gov-
ernment “deriv[es] its powers directly” from the sovereign