Substantive and procedural law benefits and protects landlords over tenants, creditors over debtors, lenders over borrowers, and the poor are seldom among the favored parties.
The position the Government finds itself in is not one of constructing a law, but of carrying out a decision given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
I do not have, nor do I believe I have seen, a vision capacious and convincing enough to propound as an organizing principle for the next phase in the law of our Constitution.
The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.
Specifically, the reservation of sovereignty to the people of the states in matters not governed by federal law is constitutionally defined and permanently enshrined in the 10th Amendment.
Internal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress.
The political status legislation which emerged in Congress in 1990 and 1991 did not receive the support needed for enactment into law during my tenure as Attorney General.
The powers of government exercised locally derive from a federal law authorizing government by consent in local affairs only, unless those affairs are otherwise governed by federal law.
However, the sovereignty of the states is constitutionally defined and recognized, while the powers of the local government in Puerto Rico are defined by, and subject to alteration under, federal statutory law.
