The beginning of the Declaration of Independence says that all of us are created equal and given natural rights by our Creator. “Among those rights,” the document says, are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Declaration of Independence was written during he period of time known as the Enlightenment, and the idea of natural human rights was becoming very popular. It was not, however, the basis of governments.
Natural rights or the Divine Right of Kings
The American idea that the government should respect natural God-given rights was not unique or even brand new, but it went against Old World traditions. European rulers traditionally had “the Divine Right of Kings” — that is, they believed that God had chosen them to rule their nations so they could do whatever they wanted. If they wanted to deprive people of life or liberty by imprisoning or executing them, they could. No one could stop them.
The idea of natural human rights was very different.
Exactly which rights did the writers of the Declaration of Independence have in mind? It’s hard to say. The sentence specifies three, but says that those three are just among the natural rights. The Bill of Rights came later, and it does not specifically say that the rights it lists are natural, but they are often included in people’s ideas of these rights. It is reasonable to conclude that the founders did not intend to say that there were no other natural rights besides the ones they listed.
The Supreme Court determined that the U.S. Constitution did not apply fully to the unincorporated territories (a classification made up in the Insular Cases). They also said, “The guaranties of certain fundamental personal rights declared in the Constitution … are not necessarily confined to the states.” That’s not a very clear declaration. It allows a lot of room for interpretation and has allowed Congress to treat Puerto Rico unfairly for more than a century.
Puerto Rico’s original Bill of Rights was based on the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in clouds rights like rest and an adequate standard of living. Congress removed this section of the Puerto Rico Constitution before ratifying the Puerto Rico Constitution. But many people today would agree that these are important human rights. Some would go further and include rights to a home or medical care or privacy.
What does this mean for government?
It is a foundational principle of the United States that there are natural human rights and that all of us are equally entitled to those rights, even though we may not always agree what belongs on the list of those rights. The founders believed that governments did not have the right — as many governments in 1776 asserted they did — to take away those rights from their citizens.
We would suggest that the right to vote, equality in federal benefits, and the ability to choose political status are all rights of which Puerto Rico is deprived by dint of being an unincorporated territory. Statehood would be a solution. Reach out to your representatives in Congress and make sure that they understand the importance of admitting Puerto Rico as a state.
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