"Puerto Rico's legal tradition traces its origins back to medieval Spain. Discovered (figuratively) by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the Americas, on November 19, 1493, Puerto Rico soon became an overseas colony of the Spanish Crown. The stage was thus set for a colonial entanglement that lasted over four hundred years, making Puerto Rico one of Spain's oldest possessions in the Americas. Puerto Rico's legal culture belongs to the civil law system, deriving its defining features from legal institutions as ancient as Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis and Alfonso X's Siete As shall be discussed in further detail below, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, on December 10, 1898, the Spanish Kingdom relinquished in favor of the United States "all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba," while also ceding Puerto Rico (then a Spanish overseas province by virtue of the 1897 Autonomic Charter), Guam and the Philippines to the victor of the so-called Spanish-American War"-- Provided by publisher.
Series:
The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States
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