For seventy years, Puerto Ricans have been bitterly divided over how to decolonize the island, a U.S. territory. Many favor Puerto Rico’s admission into statehood. But many others support a different kind of relationship with the United States: they believe that in 1952, Puerto Rico entered into a “compact” with the United States that transformed it from a territory into a “commonwealth,” and they insist that “commonwealth” status made Puerto Rico a separate sovereign in permanent union with the United States. Statehood supporters argue that there is no compact, nor should there be: it is neither constitutionally possible, nor desirable as a goal of self-determination. Without even acknowledging the existence of this debate, Justice Sotomayor recently declared the existence of the “compact” in a concurrence in a case in which no one raised it. By doing so, Justice Sotomayor took sides in the divisive political debate over Puerto Rico’s future.

- The Yale Law Journal

- VOLUME 131

Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus is the George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia Law School, where she has been a faculty member since 2007. A Puerto Rican raised on the island, her scholarship focuses on the constitutional history of American territorial expansion and the extraterritorial application of the U.S. Constitution. She examines these topics' implications for American federalism, citizenship, and nationhood, with particular attention to the political status of Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories, including the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. (law.columbia.edu)

📚 Education

• Ph.D. in History, Princeton University (2010)

• J.D., Yale Law School (1998)

• M.Phil. in Political Thought and Intellectual History, University of Cambridge (1995)

• B.A. in History and Latin American Studies, Princeton University (1990) (academiajurisprudenciapr.org, lawschools.justia.com, law.columbia.edu)

🏛️ Professional Experience

Before joining Columbia Law School, Ponsa-Kraus clerked for Judge José A. Cabranes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Stephen G. Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. She is also an affiliated faculty member of the Columbia University Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. (law.columbia.edu)

📖 Selected Publications

• “The Insular Cases Run Amok: Against Constitutional Exceptionalism in the Territories,” 131 Yale Law Journal 2449 (2022)

• “A Perfectly Empty Gift,” 119 Michigan Law Review 1223 (2021)

• “Political Wine in a Judicial Bottle: Justice Sotomayor’s Surprising Concurrence in Aurelius,” 130 Yale L.J. Forum (2020)

• “When Statehood Was Autonomy,” in Reconsidering the Insular Cases: The Past and Future of the American Empire (Harvard University Press, 2015)

• “A Convenient Constitution? Extraterritoriality after Boumediene,” 109 Columbia Law Review 973 (2009)

• Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution (Duke University Press, 2001)

🗣️ Public Engagement

Ponsa-Kraus has contributed to various media outlets, including Time, The New York Times, and El Nuevo Día, discussing issues related to Puerto Rico's political status and constitutional rights. She has also provided testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and participated in public discussions on platforms such as NPR's The Takeaway and the We the People podcast. (law.columbia.edu, law.columbia.edu)

For more information, you can visit her Columbia Law School faculty page.