A Brief History of Citizenship and Voting Rights in Hawai'i
A Brief History of Citizenship and Voting Rights in Hawai'i (Kingdom, Republic, Territory, and State)
In Spring, 2002 a very important article was published by Patrick W. Hanifin in the Hawaii Bar Journal, Vol. V, No. 13, pp. 15-44. Its title is "To Dwell on the Earth in Unity: Rice, Arakaki, and the Growth of Citizenship and Voting Rights in Hawai'i"
Attorney Patrick W. Hanifin specializes in civil rights, land use and environmental law. He is a partner in the Honolulu law firm of Im Hanifin Parsons. He is also the Hawai'i attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit public interest law firm. He can be contacted as follows:
Patrick W. Hanifin, Esq.
Im Hanifin Parsons
1001 Bishop Street
Pacific Tower, Suite 2475
Honolulu, Hawaii 96813
Phone (direct line) : 808-585-7768
Fax: 808-585-0336
Email: patrick.hanifin@ihplaw.com
To see the final version of the article as published in the Hawaii Bar Journal, click here:
The issues of citizenship, voting rights, and property rights are of concern in Hawai'i today because of a growing movement toward racial separatism and ethnic nationalism by some Hawaiian sovereignty activists. In 1982 Mr. Hanifin published a scholarly article in the Hawai'i Bar Journal on the issue of reparations for ethnic Hawaiians, containing 152 footnotes. Please see Are kanaka maoli entitled to reparations?
An informal version of that article on reparations can be seen at http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hanifinallsovereign.html
Mr. Hanifin also published an informal article in the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper of Sunday, April 8, 2001 responding to the usual diatribe of a sovereignty activist claiming that racially-defined Hawaiians are entitled to a "restoration" of a "nation." Mr. Hanifin points out that there are five different meanings of "nation" used interchangeably and incorrectly by sovereignty activists. See: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2001/Apr/08/op/op05a.html