DIVA number of leading legal scholars address different aspects of the American experience of territorial government in areas unincorporated for reasons of geography and the cultural and racial makeup of their peoples with special emphasis on the status of P/div

Focuses on America's first attempts at empire-building through a string of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the early part of the 20th century that tried to define the legal and constitutional status of America's island territories: Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, among others, and reveals how the Court provided the rationalization for the establishment of an American empire.