Citizenship and Constitutional Relationship in American Samoa

By Daniel Aga Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — (Note: The recent Supreme Court decision on the Citizenship Clause brings renewed attention to American Samoa’s unique relationship with the United States. For American Samoa, citizenship is not only a question of individual rights. It is also connected to the Deeds of Cession, local self-government, land, culture, and the constitutional relationship formed between Samoan leaders and the United States.) I. The Terrain The questions raised by this roundtable largely concern citizenship, status, and constitutional meaning. My own interest begins slightly earlier in the sequence. Not with citizenship, but with the constitutional relationship itself. By constitutional relationship, I mean the constitutional understanding that explains how authority, obligation, and political status were constituted in the first place — not just the later administrative framework that developed afterward. Because as I see the terrain, questions about citizenship rarely begin with citizenship itself. They often emerge from earlier assumptions about constitutional relationship, authority, and political status. This is not primarily a chronological sequence. It is a constitutional sequence defined by assumptions constitutional analysis begins with. Part of my inquiry concerns the relationship between constitutional origins and the later frameworks through which those relationships come to be governed. Such is the relationship between American Samoa and the United States – one grounded in and expressed through the Deeds of Cession. The Deeds of Cession were agreements between the leading representatives of the respective Samoan polities, or ItuMalo, and the United States that transferred sovereignty while recognizing certain local structures and obligations. Over time, however, that relationship also came to be governed through territorial doctrine, federal statutes, and administrative systems. I’m not arguing that the Deeds override territorial law. I’m asking whether later territorial frameworks fully capture the constitutional significance of a relationship that, in the case of American Samoa, was grounded in and expressed through the Deeds of Cession. II. Core inquiry And the question that emerged for me is this – If constitutional origins are misidentified, do subsequent debates over political status, citizenship, and rights begin from assumptions that obscure important obligations or political relationships? Over time, the question shifted. I stopped asking: Which constitutional category does American Samoa fit within? And began asking: Are the categories themselves sufficient to describe a relationship formed through agreement and later administered through territorial structures? But if the relationship originates in the Deeds of Cession—agreements grounded in consent and later ratified and confirmed by Congress—then perhaps the threshold question is not territorial status, but the nature of the constitutional relationship those agreements created. The debate is often framed as whether equality should reach American Samoa. My question is different: What happens when equality arrives without consent, and constitutional relationships built on agreement are interpreted as if agreement never mattered? The Deeds clearly establish allegiance and governance while recognizing customary authority and property rights. But they do not expressly promise birthright U.S. citizenship or resolve how later constitutional citizenship doctrines should apply within that relationship. I want to be careful here. This is not a resistance to equality. Nor is it a claim that distinct political communities should stand outside constitutional scrutiny. It is a defense of interpreting equality in light of constitutional relationships formed through agreement, participation, and consent. And a question of whether universal frameworks — constitutional, civil-rights, or international — sometimes misfit distinct constitutional relationships, or whether frameworks designed to protect individuals may obscure political communities constituted through agreement and consent. Many Indigenous and territorial communities encountered universal equality frameworks only after earlier questions of conquest, land loss, and political restructuring had already occurred. Part of my question is whether constitutional analysis sometimes begins only after foundational colonial transformations have already been normalized. Normalization can sometimes become a mechanism of constitutional erasure. Communities that experienced incorporation differently may approach equality and citizenship through different constitutional histories. Even anti-colonial arguments may begin from constitutional assumptions shaped by earlier colonial frameworks. That concern is not unique to American Samoa. Courts often search for analogies. Territories and Tribal Nations are sometimes brought into comparison because both raise questions of political status, self-government, and colonial history. But similarities should not erase differences in constitutional origin. Because constitutional relationships founded through distinct agreements may require analysis attentive to those origins before comparison. The challenge is to distinguish the colonial scaffolding from the small but meaningful space left for territorial consent before normalization completes the erasure. III. Why It Matters Beyond American Samoa. Why should anyone else care? What constitutional meanings disappear when later administrative structures become treated as the constitutional baseline? Because the issue may extend beyond American Samoa. Put differently: Before analyzing citizenship, status, or rights, should we first examine the constitutional relationships from which those questions emerge? And if what appears to be anomaly is sometimes misclassification — then perhaps the task is not extending existing categories, but re-considering where constitutional analysis ought to begin. (These remarks were made at the Law & Society Association, 2026 Annual Meeting Roundtable” Citizenship and Colonial Rule, the Question of Birthright Citizenship in the US Territories on May 25, 2026.) Section: Local News Tags: Citizenship and Constitutional Relationship
2026-07-02 17:57:06