Abstract
The notion that individuals have the right to define their identities, as fickle as those identities may be, is an important constitutional value that, among others, is embraced by our constitutional system. Through many different mechanisms we shape our identities and select how to project them. Those identity-formation tools include decisions we make regarding the way we choose to live our lives in fundamental matters. One important constitutional hook on which this value hangs, in U.S. and Puerto Rico Constitutional Law, is decisionmaking privacy. The article considers how identity-definition in Puerto Rico and United States constitutional law may be used to bolster legal and political claims in contexts such as intimate sexual relations, same-sex marriage and unconventional family relations. Because the Constitution of Puerto Rico is a result of the combination of different constitutional traditions, our right to privacy is infused with American and Continental notions of privacy and human dignity. It thus provides an ideal context to analyze decisionmaking privacy as a constitutional repository for identity-definition values.