Félix Córdova Dávila

Félix Lope María Córdova Dávila (November 20, 1878 – December 3, 1938) was a Puerto Rican political leader, jurist, and legislator who served as Puerto Rico’s fourth Resident Commissioner in the United States Congress from 1917 to 1933 and later as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. A member of the Unionist Party, he represented Puerto Rico as a non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives for eight terms during a significant period in American and Puerto Rican history, and subsequently played a prominent role in the island’s judiciary.

Córdova Dávila was born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, to Lope Córdova y Thibault and María Concepción Dávila y Dávila. Orphaned at a young age, he was placed in the care of his cousin, Dr. Gonzalo María Córdova y Dávila, in Jayuya. He began his education largely on his own, drawing on the extensive library of his cousins Gonzalo and Ulpiano. During his adolescence, he attended public schools in Manatí while working in a drugstore owned by another cousin, Clemente Ramírez de Arellano Córdova. This combination of self-directed study, formal schooling, and practical work experience shaped his intellectual development and prepared him for a legal and political career.

After the United States acquired Puerto Rico in 1898, Córdova Dávila decided to pursue legal studies in Washington, D.C., despite knowing very little English. He used the earnings from a book of poetry he had published to finance his education. Attracted by low tuition, he enrolled at Howard University Law School, unaware that it was a historically Black institution. As the only white student in his class, he was well treated by his fellow students and successfully completed his first year there. He then transferred to National University Law School in Washington, D.C.—now part of George Washington University Law School—where he obtained a Master of Laws degree. Before returning to Puerto Rico, he was initially denied a license to practice law in the District of Columbia on the grounds that Puerto Ricans were not yet United States citizens. He protested this exclusion before the District Bar and ultimately secured admission to practice in the nation’s capital. He was admitted to the bar in Puerto Rico in 1903, formally beginning his legal career on the island.

Córdova Dávila quickly advanced through a series of judicial and prosecutorial posts in Puerto Rico’s local court system. In 1904, Governor William Hunt appointed him judge of the municipal court of Caguas, and later that same year he became judge of the municipal court of Manatí, serving there until 1908. He was then appointed district attorney for Aguadilla in 1908, followed by service as judge of the district court of Guayama from 1908 to 1910, judge of the district court of Arecibo from 1910 to 1911, and judge of the district court of San Juan from 1911 to 1917. These positions, all within Puerto Rico’s local judiciary and distinct from the United States District Court, established his reputation as a capable jurist. On January 12, 1912, he joined eight other attorneys and judges in founding Puerto Rico’s first law school under United States rule, operating out of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño, and he served as its first professor of Civil Code. This institution later evolved into the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, marking his lasting contribution to legal education on the island.

On July 16, 1917, Córdova Dávila was elected as the Union Party candidate to serve as Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico to the United States, succeeding Luis Muñoz Rivera, who had died in November 1916 and had recommended him as his successor. As Resident Commissioner, he served as Puerto Rico’s non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives and participated in the legislative and democratic processes of Congress, representing the interests of his Puerto Rican constituents during a transformative era following the Jones–Shafroth Act of 1917. He was re-elected to four-year terms in 1920, 1924, and 1928, and his tenure in Congress extended from 1917 until his resignation in 1932, encompassing eight terms in office. During this period, he worked to advance Puerto Rico’s political and economic interests within the framework of the U.S. federal system. When he opened his congressional office, he hired Luis Muñoz Marín, son of his predecessor, as his clerk out of a sense of duty to Muñoz Rivera. Muñoz Marín later recalled his two months in Washington fondly in his memoirs, while Córdova Dávila, in correspondence with his friend Epifanio Fernández Vanga, observed that the young clerk had “natural talent but lacks the education to perform at this task,” noting that office affairs were disorganized and its public image affected.

Córdova Dávila’s personal life intersected with his public career. In 1906, he married Mercedes Díaz Collazo. The couple had three sons: Jorge Luis, born in 1907, who would later follow in his father’s footsteps as both an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico and, decades later, as Resident Commissioner in Congress from 1969 to 1972; Félix Lope, born in 1909; and Enrique, born in 1913. In 1918, during the global influenza pandemic that followed World War I, his wife and three children contracted influenza brought back by American soldiers returning from Europe. While his children recovered, Mercedes died in October 1918. The following year, in 1919, he married his second wife, Patria Martínez, though the couple eventually became estranged over time.

On April 11, 1932, Córdova Dávila resigned as Resident Commissioner after being appointed by President Herbert Hoover as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. In this capacity, he shifted from legislative advocacy in Washington to the interpretation and application of law at the highest judicial level on the island. He served on the Supreme Court from 1932 until March 31, 1938, when he retired in declining health. Suffering from prostate cancer, he left the bench to rest and prepare for the end of his life. He died on December 3, 1938, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the age of 60.

Córdova Dávila’s legacy as a legislator and jurist has continued to attract scholarly attention. Dr. Loretta Phelps de Córdova, the wife of one of his descendants, has published research on his service as Resident Commissioner, including the volume “La Obra de Félix Córdova Dávila,” issued by the Office of the Official Historian of Puerto Rico in 1999. A series of his letters is being published through a collaboration between Dr. Phelps de Córdova and the Official Historian of Puerto Rico, Dr. Luis González Vale, further documenting his role in Puerto Rican political and legal history and his place among notable Puerto Ricans and Hispanic Americans who have served in the United States Congress.