Puerto Rico is the only current U.S. jurisdiction whose legal system operates primarily in a language other than American English: namely, Spanish. Because the U.S. federal government operates primarily in English, Puerto Rican attorneys are typically bilingual in order to litigate in English in U.S. federal courts and to litigate federal preemption issues in Puerto Rican courts.[citation needed]
Title 48 of the United States Code outlines the role of the United States Code to United States territories and insular areas such as Puerto Rico.
Leyes de Puerto Rico
Many of the Laws of Puerto Rico (Leyes de Puerto Rico) are modeled after the Spanish Civil Code, which is part of the Law of Spain.[2] After the U.S. government assumed control of Puerto Rico in 1901, it initiated legal reforms resulting in the adoption of codes of criminal law, criminal procedure, and civil procedure modeled after those then in effect in California. Although Puerto Rico has since followed the federal example of transferring criminal and civil procedure from statutory law to rules promulgated by the judiciary, several portions of its criminal law still reflect the influence of the California Penal Code.
"Puerto Rico", Caselaw Access Project, Harvard Law School, OCLC1078785565, Court decisions freely available to the public online, in a consistent format, digitized from the collection of the Harvard Law Library
