Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-260) and index.
Contents
Essential History -- The U.S. Expansionist Drive -- Puerto Rico Before 1898 -- Puerto Rico Under the American Regime -- The Judicial Construction of Colonialism -- The Legal Doctrine of the Insular Cases -- The Legal Theory and Ideology of the Insular Cases -- The Constitutive Effects of the Insular Cases -- The Production of Hegemony in Puerto Rican Society -- Hegemony Through Citizenship -- Hegemony Through Legal Consciousness: Rights, Partial Democracy, and the Rule of Law.
Summary
"The Legal Construction of Identity: The Judicial and Social Legacy, of American Colonialism in Puerto Rico investigates how the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico has been created and recreated over the past 100 years. More specifically, author Efren Rivera Ramos engages in the lively exploration of how law has contributed to the construction of a particular social reality embodied by the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico."
"Dr. Rivera Ramos argues that legal constructs and norms govern the struggle for the definition of a specific Puerto Rican identity. This struggle includes the tension between claiming rights of U.S. citizenship and participation on the one hand and asserting a separate cultural identity, on the other. In this sense, the law has been a crucial arbiter of self-determination and self-perception as many Puerto Ricans strive to form a distinct national identity. This book will appeal to social scientists and legal scholars interested in the symbiotic relationship between law and society."--Jacket.