(1) Patrick W. Hanifin, “Hawaiian Reparations: Nothing Lost, Nothing Owed.” XVII HAWAII BAR JOURNAL No. 2 (1982)
This article with 152 footnotes, published in hardcopy in 1982 was given to Kenneth Conklin by Patrick Hanifin in electronic form on a computer diskette on January 9, 2000. Conklin then did some minor editing to reconcile the electronic contents with the hardcopy published version, and to provide a system for marking the footnotes where they occurred but gathering the contents of the footnotes at the end.
The html version from January 2000 is at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hanifinreparations.html
A pdf version of this formal article, made from the html version with improved formatting, can be downloaded from
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles/HanifinReparations1982.pdf
and is also available at
http://www.hawaiimatters.com/hanifin2.pdf
A greatly simplified and informal version of this essay, written in a delightful person-to-person style, can be seen at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hanifinallsovereign.html
The simplified informal version was further shortened and simplified, and was published by the Honolulu Advertiser on March 7, 2000 at:
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/2000/Mar/07/opinion4.html
------------------------
(2) In the summer of 1999 it was announced that the Clinton administration would be sending representatives of the Department of Justice and the Department of Interior to Hawai’i to hold hearings in December on “reconciliation” with Native Hawaiians (as called for in the “Apology bill”), and possible reparations. For example, see the report in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin of July 24:
http://starbulletin.com/1999/07/24/news/story6.html
Patrick Hanifin was apparently very concerned about those hearings, because of the knowledge he gained in writing his 1982 article. A procedure was available for concerned citizens to send written testimony to the Department of Interior before those hearings were held. On November 2, 1999 Patrick Hanifin wrote a letter, available at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles/HanifinReconcLtr110299.pdf
and also available from the DOI website at:
http://www.doi.gov/nativehawaiians/pdf/hanifinp.pdf
After the hearings were held in December 1999, the Department of Interior produced a draft report and once again called for comments. Patrick Hanifin’s comments, submitted on September 21, 2000 were included in an appendix to the final report published October 23, 2000 and are available at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles/HanifinReconcTestmny092100.pdf
and also available from the DOI website at:
http://www.doi.gov/nativehawaiians/pdf/hanifinpa.pdf
-------------------------
(3) The Arakaki I lawsuit
On July 25, 2000 a complaint was filed by a multiracial group of plaintiffs (including two ethnic Hawaiians) in U.S. District Court in Honolulu, seeking a Temporary Restraining Order to probibit the State of Hawai’i, the Governor, and officials of the State Elections Office from enforcing the racial restriction on candidacy for OHA. Details about this lawsuit can be found at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/arakaki.html
At the time that lawsuit was filed, Patrick Hanifin was still working as an associate at Cades, Schutte, Fleming and Wright, and he was not available to participate in Arakaki I. However, he resigned from Cades on August 1 and joined a new law firm, where he then became available. Immediately after plaintiffs won the preliminary injunction on August 15, Patrick joined the Arakaki team. His work helped defeat arguments by the state and by OHA, and win the motion for summary judgment for the permanent injunction. When the state later appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Patrick’s strong arguments helped lead the Arakaki team to victory. His writing can be seen in the language of the Arakaki 9th Circuit response brief, provided in its entirety at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/arakaki9cirappealresponse.html
PERSONAL NOTE FROM KEN CONKLIN REGARDING THE IMPORTANCE OF PATRICK HANIFIN’S WORK IN ARAKAKI I, AND HOW HE CAME TO JOIN THE TEAM
In Arakaki I, I was one of the plaintiffs; and, following the success of the lawsuit, I was the first non-ethnic-Hawaiian ever to become a candidate for trustee of Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Although lawyers are required by their code of ethics to be “zealous advocates” for their clients, Patrick’s zealousness was far above the call of duty. He was finally able to use his professional skills in a court of law to work on behalf of moral and political beliefs he had long held dear.
How Patrick came to join Arakaki I is an interesting story. First, some background describing the difficult circumstances of Arakaki I before Patrick Hanifin joined the case. Then a brief description of how Patrick became available to help.
In February 2000 the Rice v. Cayetano decision had been handed down, affirming that all qualified voters in Hawai’i, regardless of race, have the right to vote for OHA trustee. In June 2000 I decided I would like to run as a cadidate for OHA trustee. It seemed logical that since everyone could now vote without racial restriction, everyone should also be able to run as a candidate without racial restriction. So in June I applied at the Office of Elections to get nominating papers to run for OHA trustee. Officials there refused to give me the nominating papers on the grounds that I do not have native Hawaiian blood. I reminded them about the Rice decision, but they insisted that decision affected only who can vote, not who can run. I asked my friend, attorney H. William Burgess, to help me be able to run for OHA trustee. Bill agreed. Bill assembled a multiracial group of plaintiffs (including two ethnic Hawaiians) and filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in Honolulu. Bill was a retired attorney, with no law office except for a computer and the books in his home. He had no legal staff, other than informal help from his devoted wife and myself and fellow plaintiffs, all non-lawyers. He agreed to work pro bono, not asking plaintiffs to pay him for his time, and bearing the costs of research and document preparation on his own. Bill single-handedly fought against the lawyers and staff of the State of Hawai’i and the $400 Million Office of Hawaiian Affairs. He won the first battle, when Judge Gillmor issued a preliminary injunction on August 15, 2000 prohibiting the State of Hawai’i from enforcing the racial restriction on candidacy and ordering the Office of Elections to issue nominating papers. A hearing was then scheduled on motions for summary judgment.
A massive amount of legal research and paperwork would be necessary in a short time to reply to the legal arguments from the state and from OHA, and also to prepare documents to support our own motion for summary judgment. We desperately needed another attorney, and the staff of a law office. But most of Honolulu’s top-quality law firms are engaged in providing legal representation to OHA or to other racially exclusionary ethnic Hawaiian institutions. Even though they might not have a legally-defined conflict of interest, or might be able to build a “Chinese wall” within the law firm, asking them to represent Arakaki would be very uncomfortable for us and for them. We were unable to find any other Hawai’i attorney with the knowledge, willingness, and freedom to help Bill. We looked outside Hawai’i and found a civil rights specialist from Houston whose views seemed ideologically compatible with ours (and who had no entanglements with racially exclusionary Hawai’i institutions!).
Just at that time, Patrick Hanifin was leaving the large, prestigious law firm where he had worked for many years, in order to join a small law firm about to reorganize. He had been giving advice to us informally, because of his support for our views. But now it would be possible for him to become an attorney of record. Patrick joined the law firm of Im, Caliboso, Yamamoto (and later became a partner in the reorganized firm of Im, Hanifin, Parsons). On August 17, 2000 he agreed to join Bill Burgess as plaintiffs’ attorney. We were delighted to be able to work with Patrick, whose loyalty to our cause was clearly demonstrated by twenty years of thought and writing; and we were also able to dismiss the out-of-state attorney and keep the case a local matter. Arakaki I then went forward to its successful conclusion. A total of 96 candidates ran for 9 seats on the OHA board including over a dozen with no Hawaiian blood. One of the non-Hawaiian candidates won a seat on the board (Charles Ota, of Maui), receiving more votes than any other candidate in the 20-year history of OHA. Several other non-Hawaiian candidates placed high in the final standings. Thus, Patrick Hanifin in Arakaki I not only won for a few people the right to run for public office, but also won for all Hawai’i’s people the right to choose from a list of candidates unrestricted by race.
-----------------------
(4) 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" The article describes the history of citizenship and voting rights in the Kingdom of Hawai’i, Republic of Hawai’i, Territory of Hawai’i, and State of Hawai’i.
One reason for writing the article was to argue against the Akaka bill on the grounds that it is racially exclusionary, and would be contrary to Hawai’i’s history of inclusiveness. Another reason was to prove that jus soli was the law of the Kingdom of Hawai’i. Hawaiian sovereignty activists had knowingly lied to people by saying that being born in the Kingdom of Hawai’i was not sufficient to make someone a subject of the Kingdom with full voting and property rights. Because of Patrick Hanifin’s research we now know that if the overthrow of the monarchy had not happened and the laws of the Kingdom had remained in place until now, then the vast majority of Hawaiian subjects with voting rights today would have no native blood. Everyone born in Hawai’i would have the same rights as native Hawaiians, as well as everyone who comes to Hawai’i and wishes to have Hawaiian citizenship.
This article as published in the Hawai’i Bar Journal in Spring 2002 can be downloaded from:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/HanifinCitizen.pdf
The draft version of the article, as submitted to journal editors in 2001, can be seen at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/HanifinCitizen2001draft.html
-----------------------
(5) The Arakaki II lawsuit: ARAKAKI V. CAYETANO (now ARAKAKI V. LINGLE)
On March 4, 2002 a multiethnic group of 16 Hawai’i citizens (including three Native Hawaiians) filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Honolulu challenging the constitutionality of both the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. Several important legal documents written by H. William Burgess and Patrick Hanifin are available, including the complaint for declaratory judgment and injunction, notice of motion, motion for temporary restraining order, and memorandum in support. There is also the plaintiffs’ reply memo to the defendants’ response. These important documents, together with published newspaper articles tracking the progress of the case, can be seen at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/arakaki2ohadhhl.html
--------------------
(6)
The Asian-Pacific Law and Policy Journal, published by the University of Hawai'i Press, published a collection of six articles on Rice and Its Progeny, in Volume 3, Issue 2, Summer, 2002. Patrick Hanifin’s article was entitled, “Rice is Right.” He discussed the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Rice v. Cayetano, Arakaki v. State of Hawai`i (Arakaki I), Barrett and Carroll, and Arakaki v. Cayetano (Arakaki II). He showed that OHA and DHHL engage in discrimination that is purely racial: it is not based on being an Indian tribe, nor on descent from Hawaiian Kingdom subjects, nor on a hereditary claim for stolen sovereignty or land, nor on race or culture, nor on being a separate nation.
Patrick W. Hanifin's article “Rice is Right” can be found on this website at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hanifinaplpj070102.pdf
and can also be found on the journal’s website at:
http://www.hawaii.edu/aplpj/pdfs/v3-12-Hanifin.pdf
================================
You may now
SEE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT PATRICK HANIFIN
or
GO BACK TO OTHER TOPICS ON THIS WEBSITE
(c) Copyright 2003 Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. All rights reserved