Is the matter settled?

Is the matter settled?

Robert M. Chapman responds to John Osorio's letter in the Advertiser. Chapman is one of the Plaintiffs in the Arakaki v Lingle lawsuit, which argues that OHA and the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act are race-based.

Here's some problems with Chapman's arguments.

As the Department of Justice stated in its 1988 opinion, "a legislative act is necessarily without extraterritorial force––confined in its operation to the territory of the State by whose legislature it is enacted." ('State' here is referring to the international sense of the word, meaning country.) This is a basic tenet of international law, which the DOJ is just restating. Hawaii was purportedly annexed by a mere joint resolution, a legislative act. DOJ concludes: "It is therefore unclear which constitutional power Congress exercised when it acquired Hawaii by joint resolution." When DOJ says it can't figure out which constitutional power was exercised, that says there was no such power! Just because the United States Congress chose to ignore international law and their own Constitution in order to create the illusion that they had acquired Hawaii, under the exigencies of the Spanish-American war, does not make it a valid annexation (any more than Iraq could unilaterally annex Kuwait).

As to the point about land claims, the U.S. court applying its own laws in a foreign territory that it is occupying through illegal annexation is totally invalid. Liliu`okalani had the occupation court system as her only venue to seek some kind of remedy, but their ruling against her — after helping to overthrow her — hardly settles the matter.

More background on the so-called annexation.

Posted: Tue - October 14, 2003 at 10:30 AM

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Published On: Dec 27, 2005 10:13 PM

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