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Page Number: 51.0

14 

FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT BD. FOR 
PUERTO RICO v. AURELIUS INVESTMENT, LLC 
SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring in judgment 

Puerto Rico on its own initiative, even if it had been abun-
dantly  explicit  in  its  intention  to  do  so.  The  truism  that 
“one  Congress  cannot  bind  a  later  Congress,”  Dorsey  v. 
United States, 567 U. S. 260, 274 (2012), appears to have its 
limits:  As  scholars  have  noted,  certain  congressional  ac-
tions  are  not  subject  to  recantation.    See,  e.g.,  Magruder, 
The  Commonwealth  Status  of  Puerto  Rico,  15  U.  Pitt. 
L. Rev. 1, 14 (1953) (listing as examples the congressional
grant  of  independence  to  the  Philippine  Islands  and  con-
gressional grant of private title to public lands under home-
stead laws); Issacharoff, 94 Ind. L. J., at 14 (“Once a Con-
gress has disposed of a territory, of necessity it binds future
Congresses to the consequences of that decision”); T. Aleini-
koff,  Semblances  of  Sovereignty:  The  Constitution,  the 
State, and American Citizenship 90 (2002) (“The granting 
of neither statehood nor independence may be revoked, nor 
may land grants or other ‘vested interests’ be called back by
a subsequent Congress”). 

Plausible reasons may exist to treat Public Law 600 and
the Federal Government’s recognition of Puerto Rico’s sov-
ereignty as similarly irrevocable, at least in the absence of 
mutual  consent.  Congress  made  clear  in  Public  Law  600
that the agreement between the Federal Government and
Puerto Rico was “in the nature of a compact.”  64 Stat. 319. 
That “solemn undertaking, based upon mutual consent, . . . 
of  such  profound  character  between  the  Federal  Govern-
ment and a community of U. S. citizens,” has struck many
as “incompatible with the concept of unilateral revocation.” 
E.g., Report of the United States-Puerto Rico Commission
on  the  Status  of  Puerto  Rico  12–13  (1966);  see  also  A. 
Leibowitz,  Defining  Status:  A  Comprehensive  Analysis  of 
United  States  Territorial  Relations  172–173  (1989)  (de-
scribing  how  “many  in  the  Congress”  understood  Public
Law 600 to constitute “an irrevocable grant of authority in
local affairs with an understanding of mutual consent being 
required before Congress would resolve the ultimate status