Overturning Vaello Madero doesn’t overturn the insular case precedence – the government did not formally contest its applicability to insular cases.
Ponsa-kraus '22 [Christina Duffy; George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History, Columbia Law School; "The Insular Cases Run Amok: Against Constitutional Exceptionalism in the Territories; The Yale Law Journal; pp. 2524-2525; https://www.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/2022-07/Insular%20Cases%20Run%20Amok.pdf; ror]
When the Court overrules the Insular Cases, it should be crystal clear both that it is overruling them and what exactly about them it is overruling. Along with being racist and imperialist, the Insular Cases were notoriously ambiguous and confusing. The decision that overrules them must be the opposite or it will only make matters worse. Specifically, it must overrule the doctrine of territorial incorporation—not merely disclaim the racism that gave rise to it while leaving the doctrine itself untouched. That means overruling both propositions in the Insular Cases: that certain constitutional provisions do not apply in certain territories because they are “unincorporated” and that the United States has the power to subject territories to territorial status indefinitely.
The latter problem does not lend itself easily to judicial resolution, while the former, which is the only way for the Court to get at either, rarely arises. Indeed, it did not arise at all in either Aurelius or Vaello Madero because the government did not contest the applicability of a constitutional provision in either case. As a result, invocations of the Insular Cases in these two cases were a frustrating exercise in shadow-boxing.339