Collection
Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Legal Challenges in the U.S. Territories
This Collection critically examines legal issues in the U.S. territories and explores pathways for reform. These four Essays challenge the emerging “Law of the Territories” framework, document the ABA’s discrimination against territorial lawyers, address reproductive and economic injustices rooted in colonialism, and analyze Congress’s historical role in territorial taxation.
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The Law of the Territories: Should It Exist?
“The Law of the Territories” is an emerging academic heading for legal scholarship on the status of U.S. territories. This Essay argues that the current momentum of this narrow “emerging field” presents an obstacle rather than a pathway to meaningful scholarly engagement, sidelining broader perspect…
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A Legacy of Discrimination: A Brief History of U.S. Territories in the American Bar Association
The American Bar Association (ABA) has done much to remedy its history of racial discrimination. However, to this day, the ABA systematically discriminates against lawyers in four overwhelmingly nonwhite U.S. territories. This Essay examines the history of this discrimination and proposes a potenti…
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Intersectional Imperial Legacies in the U.S. Territories
Women in the U.S. territories experience particularized harms often rooted in U.S. colonization and the territories’ political relationship with the United States. This Essay describes how traditional legal frameworks can sharply constrict available remedies and sketches the contours of a rational-b…
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The Origins of U.S. Territorial Taxation and the Insular Cases
This Essay examines Congress’s design of territorial revenue systems during 1898-1900. Eager to protect the federal fisc, lawmakers instituted tariffs between Puerto Rico and the mainland. Their choices segregated the territories from the federal fiscal apparatus, prompted the Insular Cases, and cr…