Igartúa-De La Rosa v. United States

David Hume, that most seminal of British philosophers, in his essay That Politics May Be Reduced To A Science,2 stated that “[i]t may easily be observed that though free governments have been commonly the most happy for those who partake of their freedom, yet are they most ruinous and oppressive to their provinces.” Although this was a statement made with more direct reference to England’s relationship to Ireland and its people, it is not one that is totally irrelevant to that between the United States and Puerto Rico and the four million United States citizens who reside there.

If on the one…