Government De Jure

Pre­served in law by our ances­tors.
Per­fect­ing itself for our descendants.

Whereas the King­dom of Hawai’i, hav­ing been in exile for one-hundred seven years due to an unlaw­ful over­throw of its gov­ern­ment de jure, has exer­cised per­fect right to reestab­lish its proper sta­tion as an inde­pen­dent nation within the com­mu­nity of nations.
—The Pre­am­ble of the Hawai­ian Con­sti­tu­tion of 2000.

Revis­ing the Constitution

On Jan­u­ary 15, 2000, the elected leg­is­la­ture of the King­dom of Hawai’i con­vened for the first time in 107 years in Ana­hola, a com­mu­nity on the island of Kaua’i. The leg­is­la­tors of the tem­po­rary gov­ern­ment vacated their offices and wit­nessed the swearing-in of their elected successors.

The objec­tive of this con­ven­tion was to retrieve the nation’s con­sti­tu­tion from sus­pen­sion and update it for the twenty-first cen­tury.  Last amended in 1887, the Hawai­ian King­dom Con­sti­tu­tion con­sisted of eighty-two arti­cles which described the func­tions and pow­ers of the monarch, the par­lia­ment and the courts of record; as well as the nat­ural, polit­i­cal and civil laws enjoyed by the cit­i­zenry. Con­sol­i­dat­ing the 82 arti­cles into ten arti­cles of related sub­ject mat­ter, a draft con­sti­tu­tion was adopted. The leg­is­la­tors were respon­si­ble for dis­trib­ut­ing copies of the draft to the cit­i­zens for their review and input. Before recess­ing, the leg­is­la­ture agreed to recon­vene at a con­sti­tu­tional con­ven­tion on March 10, 11 & 12, 2000 in Waimea, a town on the big island of Hawai’i.

In prepar­ing for this con­sti­tu­tional con­ven­tion, a pro­to­col was fol­lowed that allowed the indi­vid­ual cit­i­zen to sub­mit draft leg­is­la­tion for con­sid­er­a­tion at three suc­ces­sive lev­els: first, review within the dis­trict; then, review amongst all dis­tricts of the island; and finally, review by the entire leg­is­la­ture. A dead­line for sub­mit­ting amend­ments was set, copies of the amend­ments from those islands that met the dead­line were made, and each leg­is­la­tor received their copies upon arriv­ing at the convention.

The leg­is­la­ture spent the entire con­ven­tion exam­in­ing and re-examining the draft con­sti­tu­tion and every sub­mit­ted amend­ment.  After much debate, a con­sti­tu­tion with lan­guage sat­is­fac­tory to the leg­is­la­ture was agreed upon. Among the fea­tures intro­duced into the con­sti­tu­tion were:

• Mak­ing the Office of the Monarch cer­e­mo­nial, with the monarch serv­ing as a national symbol
• Estab­lish­ing an Office of the Prime Minister
• Allow­ing the cit­i­zens — rather than the leg­is­la­ture — to elect the Prime Minister
• Insert­ing direct democ­racy into the leg­isla­tive pro­ce­dure of pass­ing laws of the land
• Extend­ing the right to vote to women
• Extend­ing the right to vote to indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens who are not landowners
• Remov­ing the monarch’s Privy Coun­cil, but retain­ing the Exec­u­tive Cab­i­net Ministers
• Reserv­ing the right to retrieve the Kingdom’s pub­lic laws placed into sus­pen­sion 107 years ago
• For­mally nam­ing the leg­is­la­ture the Mana Kau Kanawai (“the body empow­ered to make laws”)
• Refer­ring to the nation as “Hawai’i”
• Reserv­ing the abil­ity to intro­duce and rat­ify addi­tional amend­ments to the constitution

Copies of this final draft were sup­plied to each leg­is­la­tor for dis­tri­b­u­tion to the cit­i­zens. The rat­i­fi­ca­tion of this con­sti­tu­tion would not be done solely by the Leg­is­la­ture. It was agreed that the Amended Hawai­ian Con­sti­tu­tion of 2000 would be rat­i­fied by the cit­i­zens in a plebescite vote. On Sat­ur­day, April 29, 2000, the Rat­i­fi­ca­tion Vote of 2000 was held in every dis­trict of the Hawai­ian Islands.

A win­ning major­ity needs two-thirds of the total num­ber of vot­ing dis­tricts. That would cur­rently require no less than six­teen districts.

The Amended Hawai­ian Con­sti­tu­tion of 2000 was passed with a major­ity of twenty dis­tricts in favor of rat­i­fi­ca­tion and four dis­tricts against.  With an approved con­sti­tu­tion, the peo­ple of the nation known as Hawai’i are now in the process of ful­fill­ing the laws within it. The first pri­or­ity was to com­plete the other two branches of government.

Appli­ca­tions to the Office of the Prime Min­is­ter were con­sid­ered. All appli­cants to the office were required to appear before a review com­mit­tee estab­lished by the leg­is­la­ture to deter­mine if they met the nec­es­sary qual­i­fi­ca­tions. One per­son emerged with the con­fi­dence of the com­mit­tee. The find­ings of the com­mit­tee were for­warded to the full legislature.

On June 17, 2000, the leg­is­la­ture declared the uncon­tested win­ner and swore him in as the Prime Min­is­ter of the King­dom of Hawai’i. On July 23, 2000, the Prime Min­is­ter appointed indi­vid­u­als to his Exec­u­tive Cabinet.

The process of ful­fill­ing the laws of the Hawai­ian Con­sti­tu­tion continues.