Page "John Marshall Harlan" Paragraph 17

Harlan was also the most stridently anti-imperialist justice on the Supreme Court, arguing consistently in the Insular Cases that the Constitution did not permit the demarcation of different rights between citizens of the states and the residents of newly acquired territories in the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam and Puerto Rico, a view that was consistently in the minority.

In Hawaii v. Mankichi ( 1903 ) his opinion stated: " If the principles now announced should become firmly established, the time may not be far distant when, under the exactions of trade and commerce, and to gratify an ambition to become the dominant power in all the earth, the United States will acquire territories in every direction ... whose inhabitants will be regarded as ' subjects ' or ' dependent peoples ,' to be controlled as Congress may see fit ... which will engraft on our republican institutions a colonial system entirely foreign to the genius of our Government and abhorrent to the principles that underlie and pervade our Constitution.