Talk:Insular Cases

message: Armstrong v. United States forms an improper link to Insular Cases.  See: volume # 80.  Someone ought to steadfastly correct the misguided link.  Superslum 05:55, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I have said a million times before, 99% of the time if you ask someone to do something on a talk page, it will be ignored. Travb (talk) 07:12, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To address the issue Superslum raises, it is not actually a "misguided link". The redirect is deliberate. The reason that Armstrong v. United States redirects to Insular Cases is because 1) it is considered one of the insular cases (as you can see from the list on the article) and 2) there is not currently any article specifically on Armstrong v. United States. So, rather than simply having a red link, the case links to the next best source of information available. If you want to write an article about Armstrong v. United States, go right ahead, that would be just super.  older ≠ wiser 12:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are a flock of troublesome titles of United States Supreme cases. 
* United States v. Ballard (1872) and United States v. Ballard (1944) must be kept apart (somehow).  I favor the extending of the titles by adding on the year of each case, placing the year in parenthesis.  
* Armstrong v. United States (1901) is one of the "insular cases," however, it must be kept apart from the earlier case, which was not involved with Hawaii (the "insula"). Superslum 13:03, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

text: There are poor links in volumes #58 and #60, Stewart v. United States; volume #68, Commander-in-chief; volume #70, The Herald; and in volumes #72, #73, #75, #76, #78, #79, #80, and #81.  I had examined Volumes #40 through #91, and noticed flawed links.  Superslum 13:03, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest bringing this up at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases. There should be a consistent style for disambiguating between court cases. I'm only tangentially interested in the cases--you'll find more interested and knowledgeable editors at the project talk page. older ≠ wiser 13:52, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I placed some commentary on that Project.  I had not known that there was a Project.  Someone else can do a better job with the flawed titles than I can.  I am returning to submitting biographies.  Superslum 16:21, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Armstrong v. United States

message: I am just citing Consejo de Playa de Ponce v. Johny Rullan, Secretary of Health of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico case regarding Boumediene v. Bush:
The latest expression from the Supreme Court on the Insular Cases occurred on June 12 of
this very year in Boumediene v. Bush, ___U.S.___, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008). This case involved
aliens detained as enemy combatants at the United States Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
who petitioned for writs of habeas corpus. Guantanamo Bay is not formally part of the United
States, and under the terms of the 1903 lease between the United States and Cuba, the latter nation
retained ultimate sovereignty over the territory, while the former nation exercises complete
jurisdiction and control. Id. at 2251-52. Based on the federal control over the Cuban property, the
Court applied the Insular Cases to hold that the detained enemy combatants were entitled to the
protection of the writ — a Constitutional provision not contained in the Bill of Rights.
The Court in reaching its conclusion in Boumediene made four crucial pronouncements
regarding the Insular Cases. First, citing Reid v. Covert, it recognized that the Insular Cases
involved territories “with wholly dissimilar traditions and institutions” that Congress intended to govern only “temporarily”. 128 S Ct. at 2255 (emphasis added).
Second, the Court, citing Justice Brennan’s concurrence in Torres, supra, held that “[i]t may
well be that over time the ties between the United States and any of its unincorporated territories strengthen in ways that are of constitutional significance. Id. at 2255 (emphasis added).
Third, the Court recognized that fundamental Constitutional rights apply to detained enemy
combatant aliens in Guantanamo Bay, an unincorporated territory over which the United States has
exercised jurisdiction or control for over 100 years. Id. at 2258-59.
Finally, and most important, the Court held the following:
Our basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The
Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire,
dispose of and govern territory, not the power to decide when where its terms apply. 
Even when the United States acts outside its
borders, its powers are not “absolute and unlimited” but are subject
“to such restrictions as are expressed in the Constitution.” Abstaining
from questions involving forward sovereignty and territorial
governance is one thing. To hold the political branches have the
power to switch the Constitution on or off at will is quite another.”'''
Id. at 2259 (citation omitted) (emphasis added).
The Court’s extremely recent pronouncements in Boumediene at this time require this Court,
as asked by the Commonwealth Secretary, to reexamine whether Puerto Rico, after one hundred ten
(110) years under the American Flag, remains an unincorporated territory (as is Guantanamo Bay),
or whether it has evolved beyond said stage.''
United States District Court decision addressing the distintion between Incorporated vs Unincorporated territories and the Insular Cases
--Seablade (talk) 18:29, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boumediene v. Bush, ___U.S.___, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008) 

message: Additional References included it regarding this case.
Justice Black, writing for the plurality, contrasted the cases before him with the Insular Cases, which involved territories "with wholly dissimilar traditions and institutions" that Congress intended to govern only "temporarily." Id., at 14. Justice Frankfurter argued that the "specific circumstances of each particular case" are relevant in determining the geographic scope of the Constitution. Id., at 54 (opinion concurring in result). And Justice Harlan, who had joined an opinion reaching the opposite result in the case in the previous Term, Reid v. Covert, 351 U. S. 487 (1956), was most explicit in rejecting a "rigid and abstract rule" for determining where constitutional guarantees extend. Reid, 354 U. S., at 74 (opinion concurring in result). He read the Insular Cases to teach that whether a constitutional provision has extraterritorial effect depends upon the "particular circumstances, the practical necessities, and the possible alternatives which Congress had before it" and, in particular, whether judicial enforcement of the provision would be "impracticable and anomalous." Id., at 74-75; see also United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U. S. 259, 277-278 (1990) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (applying the "impracticable and anomalous" extraterritoriality test in the Fourth Amendment context).
That the petitioners in Reid were American citizens was a key factor in the case and was central to the plurality's conclusion that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments apply to American civilians tried outside the United States. But practical considerations, related not to the petitioners' citizenship but to the place of their confinement and trial, were relevant to each Member of the Reid majority. And to Justices Harlan and Frankfurter (whose votes were necessary to the Court's disposition) these considerations were the decisive factors in the case.
--Seablade (talk) 17:04, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additional References included it regarding this case. 

message: Citing U.S. Supreme Court Position about the Insular Cases in Torres v.Puerto Rico  
: 
In Torres, Justice Brennan wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justices Stewart, Marshall, and Blackmun. In the same, he noted that the present validity of the Insular Cases was questionable:
Whatever the validity of [the Insular Cases], in the particular
historical context in which they were decided, those cases are clearly
not authority for questioning the application of the Fourth
Amendment - or any other provision of the Bill of Rights - to the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in the 1970s. As Justice Black
declared in Reid v. Covert: “neither the cases nor their reasoning
should be given any further expansion. The concept that the Bill of
Rights and other constitutional protections against arbitrary
government are inoperant when they become inconvenient or when
expediency dictates otherwise is a very dangerous doctrine and if
allowed to flourish would destroy the benefit of a written
Constitution and undermine the basis of our government”.
442 U.S. at 475-476
--Seablade (talk) 18:52, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Torres v. Puerto Rico {{ussc|442|465|1979}},  

message: Was the question of which territories were unincorporated established by the court, or by legislation? In particular, why was Hawaii considered an incorporated territory? --Jfruh (talk) 03:34, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: A combination of both—the Supreme Court decided that Hawaii was incorporated in large part because the Organic Act for the territory conferred U.S. citizenship on the people of Hawaii. (Downes v. Bidwell; Hawaii v. Manchiki.) U.S. citizenship was not conferred on the populations of the territories acquired in the Spanish-American War or American Samoa, and this is one reason offered for their "unincorporated" status at the time. This rationale for the distinction broke down, of course, after the people of several territories were also made U.S. citizens (Puerto Rico 1917, U.S. Virgin Islands 1927, Guam 1950), but by that point the status of the different territories was entrenched, and the Court found continued grounds for distinguishing the status of Puerto Rico from that of, e.g., Alaska and finding Puerto Rico to still be unincorporated. (Balzac v. Porto Rico). (The word "insular" simply derives from the Latin for "island" and does not connote a specific territorial status: pre-statehood Hawaii and the pre-independence Philippine Islands and Puerto Rico were all sometimes referred to as "insular territories," although not all the territories were ever administered through the Bureau of Insular Affairs.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 07:07, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who decided which territories were "insular" 

message: Recent scholarship suggests that the United States Supreme Court is currently establishing new Insular Cases. 
Willie Santana, The New Insular Cases, 29 Wm. & Mary J. Women & L. 435 (2023), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol29/iss2/4
Jorge M. Farinacci Fernós, The ‘New’ Insular Cases and the Territorial Clause: From Temporary Incorporation to Permanent Unincorporation, 34 Cent. J. 37 (2022). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/journal_articles/1070 206.16.244.179 (talk) 16:35, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Insular Cases