Hawaii Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

A written monarchy that became an American territory

Hawaii's law begins with the Hawaiian kingdom. Before written law, the Hawaiian people lived under the kapu system — a body of sacred prohibitions enforced by chiefly authority — and land was held communally. Kamehameha I unified the islands by about 1810.

Written law arrived with the constitutional monarchy: a Declaration of Rights in 1839, the Kingdom's first constitution in 1840, and further constitutions in 1852, 1864, and 1887, with the Republic adopting its own in 1894. Much of it was drafted with the help of American Protestant missionaries and American-trained jurists, on New England models, while the private law increasingly followed the English common law. The three eras a researcher meets in the records are the Kingdom, to 1893; the Provisional Government and Republic, 1893 to 1900; and the Territory of Hawaii, 1900 to statehood in 1959. The country basis is therefore layered: Hawaiian custom at the base, American models over it, and English common law adopted wholesale near the end of the Kingdom.

The common law after 1892

By an act of 1892 the Kingdom declared the common law of England — as expressed in English and American court decisions — to be the law of Hawaii, except where a Hawaiian statute, a Hawaiian judicial precedent, or an established Hawaiian usage governed instead.¹ After 1892, then, a private-law question was answered by the English common law unless a Hawaiian statute had changed it, and a claim resting on Hawaiian custom had to trace that usage to a practice already fixed before the act. Before 1892 the courts enforced customary claims only where a statute preserved them.²

Separate property for husband and wife

For husband and wife, Hawaii followed the common law of separate property: each spouse owned his or her own property. From 1846 the governing rule was coverture — the common-law rule that merged a wife's legal identity into her husband's for as long as the marriage lasted.

The Second Act of Kamehameha III set it out in 1846, and the Civil Code of 1859 restated it almost word for word: a married woman was "deemed for all civil purposes, to be merged in her husband, and civilly dead." Her husband took her movable property and managed her land. The rule reached the courtroom as well as the deed. A married woman could not sue or be sued unless her husband was joined in the suit. She could never be imprisoned in a civil action, and he answered in damages for her wrongs. A case touching a wife before 1888 therefore names the husband as a party.³ Coverture was dismantled by the Married Women's Property Act of 1888, which let a married woman hold and deal with property in her own right.⁴

Separate property was the rule throughout, with one four-year exception: from 1945 to 1949 a statutory community-property system ran alongside the common law.⁵ See Inheritance, below.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Majority at twenty for men and eighteen for women

Full legal age in Hawaii differed by sex. The Civil Code of 1859 provided that males reached majority at twenty and females at eighteen.⁶ Anyone below those ages was a minor. The female age was raised to twenty, matching the male age, by an amendment of 1919, and both were lowered to eighteen in 1972.⁶ So a man born in 1875 came of age in 1895 at twenty; a woman born in 1875 came of age in 1893 at eighteen. These are the ages that govern the other milestones tied to "full age" below — the age to make a will, and the age to serve as executor.

Before 1859 no statute fixed a general age of majority. The 1846 act pointed to twenty all the same: a father was bound to support his children "until they severally attain the age of twenty years," and the same act used the phrase "the age of legal majority" without defining it.⁷ The Civil Code of 1859 was the first Hawaiian law to state the ages plainly.

A minor's capacity

A minor could own property outright at any age. What the law restrained was the power to give it away: a contract or a deed made by a minor was voidable (good until the minor chose to undo it), and could be disaffirmed within a reasonable time after the minor reached majority.⁸ A minor's land was therefore ordinarily sold not by the child but by a guardian, under an order of the probate court.

Marriage

Who could marry and whose consent was needed

A valid Hawaiian marriage required four things: that the parties meet a minimum age; that they be outside the fourth degree of consanguinity (blood kinship); that neither have a living husband or wife; and that they hold a license. These conditions were set by statute in 1846 and carried into the Civil Code of 1859.⁹ Under the 1846 act the license came from the governor of the island where the woman lived, who had to satisfy himself that the marriage broke none of the rules; by 1859 it came from an agent appointed to issue them.⁹

The marrying ages and the consent ages moved separately. The consent ages were tied to majority rather than to the marrying ages, so for most of the period a couple could marry years before they could marry without a parent's leave:

So a bride of 15 in 1880 married lawfully but needed her parent’s consent; a groom of 21 needed none. From 1939 a girl who had turned 15 but not 16 could marry on the written approval of the circuit judge who handled juvenile cases where she lived. The consent was written, and from 1929 it was given under oath, by the parent, guardian, or other person having charge of the minor. Where a young person married, that consent should sit in the license file with the application.

The license and common-law marriage

The license was the one thing a couple could not do without. It was unlawful to marry in Hawaii without one, and the courts held that the license, not the ceremony, was what made the marriage.¹³ A couple who simply lived together as husband and wife were not married, however long the union lasted and however plainly they held themselves out. Hawaii therefore never recognized common-law marriage made within its own borders.¹⁴

A marriage made in another country or another state was recognized in Hawaii if it was good where it was made, and that included a common-law marriage formed in a place that allowed them.¹⁵ So a couple who married informally on the mainland and then moved to the islands were treated as married; a couple who did the same thing in Hawaii were not.

Couples still normally had a ceremony. It was performed by a minister, judge, or other person authorized by law, who had to be shown the license first.¹⁶ Every officiant had to keep a record of each marriage and give the couple a signed certificate.¹⁷ The evidence of a Hawaiian marriage is therefore a license and a return filed by the officiant. Where the record of a marriage survives, the courts presumed that a license had been issued, so a missing license does not by itself unmake the marriage.¹⁴

The earliest unions are the exception. The 1846 act reached back: a couple already living together as husband and wife when written marriage law arrived were treated as married.⁹ No license was ever issued for them, so there is none to look for.

Restrictions on marriage

A marriage was void if the parties were within the fourth degree of consanguinity or if one party already had a living spouse.⁹ The Territory named the forbidden degrees instead of counting them: ancestor and descendant, brother and sister of the half blood as well as the whole, uncle and niece, and aunt and nephew. It kept the bar on marrying while a husband or wife was still living.¹²

The age, kinship, and license rules applied to every couple alike, whatever their race, and Hawaii never barred marriage between the races.¹⁸ Marriages between Native Hawaiians, haole (white residents), and the Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Filipino immigrants who came to work the plantations were entered in the ordinary marriage register, in a single series.

One rule did single out a group. From 1846 the marriage of a native Hawaiian woman to a foreign man who had come to live in the islands was valid only if he had first been naturalized by taking the oath of allegiance. The Civil Code of 1859 carried that requirement forward word for word. It ended in 1872, when a new marriage act repealed the old section and re-enacted the conditions without it.⁹ Where such a couple married, a naturalization record stands behind the marriage record.

Property Ownership

From communal tenure to private title

Before 1848 no one, chief or commoner, held land as private property. The mōʻī (paramount ruler) held all land; through the konohiki he allotted the use of it to lesser chiefs and to the makaʻāinana who lived on and cultivated it, in exchange for labor and a share of the crop.¹⁹ Turning that communal tenure into private title took three connected steps, and each left a record.

The Great Māhele of 1848 was the division of interests: between late January and early March 1848 the King and some 245 chiefs and konohiki signed the Māhele Book, separating the King's lands from the chiefs' lands and from the lands set aside for the government.²⁰ The division did not by itself give anyone a title a court would recognize; it sorted out who could claim what.

The Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles — the Land Commission, established in 1845 — heard the claims and issued Land Commission Awards; a claimant turned an award into full ownership by paying the government a sum called a commutation and receiving a Royal Patent.²¹ The claim, the native and neighbor testimony taken to prove it (often in Hawaiian), the survey, the award, and the patent place a named person on a named parcel, with witnesses.

The Kuleana Act of 6 August 1850 granted fee-simple title to the common people for the taro patches and house lots they actually occupied and cultivated.²² The act also reserved to them a continuing right to gather from the land they lived on, to water, and to a way across the surrounding land; an amending act of 11 July 1851 removed a condition that had let landlords block those rights.²³ A second route let a native who held no land buy a government lot of one to fifty acres.²² Relatively few of the eligible makaʻāinana obtained awards, and only a small fraction of the Kingdom's land passed into commoners' hands.

Who could own land

Once fee-simple title existed, the right to acquire and hold land belonged to Hawaiian men without regard to rank: a former konohiki chief and a makaʻāinana who received a kuleana held their patents on the same legal footing. For foreigners the right came later and by stages, and annexation changed the terms again.

A deed to a foreigner made between July 1850 and June 1854 is worth reading for that forfeiture clause.²⁴

Annexation moved the question into federal law, and there it split in two. Private land fell under the federal alien land act of 1887: a citizen could buy freely, and so could any alien who was a bona fide resident of the United States, on the same terms as a citizen. An alien who was neither a resident nor a declared candidate for citizenship could not acquire land in a Territory at all, though he could still take it by inheritance or in payment of a debt if he sold within ten years, and the bar never reached a lot in an incorporated town or village or a mining claim.²⁵ Public land fell under the Organic Act, which required a homesteader to be a citizen, or to have declared his intention to become one, before he could hold a certificate of occupation, a right of purchase lease, a cash freehold agreement, or a special homestead agreement.²⁶

That split matters for immigrant families. Federal naturalization law barred most Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino immigrants from citizenship as "aliens ineligible to citizenship," and that cost them the vote, jury service, and naturalization. It did not cost them the right to buy a house lot, because the federal test for landholding was bona fide residence and not eligibility for citizenship — the opposite of the rule in California and the mainland states that copied its alien land law of 1913, where ineligibility was itself the bar. A plantation family that appears in no voter register and no naturalization file may still appear in the conveyance books. It will not appear in the public-land homestead files, which were closed to non-citizens.

One later program limited land by ancestry rather than by nationality. The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, 1920 — passed by Congress and approved on 9 July 1921 — set aside public land as Hawaiian home lands and offered homestead leases of ninety-nine years at a rent of a dollar a year, but only to applicants having at least one-half Hawaiian blood.²⁷ What the applicant received was a lease and not a fee-simple title, so the award does not appear in the conveyance books. The application file is the record instead, and because eligibility turned on proving descent, that file can hold genealogy the family assembled itself.

Women and land

A single woman or widow — a feme sole (woman alone) — could own, buy, sell, and mortgage land exactly as a man could. A married woman's position turned on the date of her marriage and on the 1888 statute.

Before the Married Women's Property Act of 1888, a wife lived under coverture. Her husband took her personal property and managed her land, drawing its rents and profits, and he could sell her land only with her written consent. The land itself stayed hers, though. It passed to her heirs at her death, and she could leave it by will.²⁸ A deed she signed alone was a different matter: without her husband joining in it, her conveyance was void and passed nothing, and his death years later did not make it good.²⁸ A married woman's solo deed in a Hawaiian chain of title before 1888 therefore did not move the title, which is why such parcels resurface in lawsuits over possession a generation later. The Act of 1888 ended the merger and let a married woman hold and convey her property in her own name.⁴

The wife's signature on the husband's deed is a dating tool, and it turns on dower. Hawaiian dower, in force from 1846, attached to every parcel the husband owned at any time during the marriage (see Inheritance, below), so to give a buyer a title free of the wife's future dower claim, the husband needed her to join the deed and release her dower.²⁹ The release was not effective unless the wife acknowledged it apart from her husband — Hawaii's version of the private examination used on the mainland.³⁰ A husband's deed signed by him alone did not cut off his wife's dower. The statute made one exception: a mortgage given to secure the purchase price of the very land being bought carried no dower, even if the wife had not signed.³¹ After the 1888 Act — and during the 1945–1949 community-property window — dower reached only the husband's separate property.³²

Land owned by children

A child could hold land at any age, by inheritance, gift, or purchase. Selling it meant waiting until majority, because a minor's deed could be undone once he came of age.⁸ A minor's land was in practice sold through a guardian under a probate order.

Witnessing a deed

Hawaii's deed system turned on acknowledgment rather than on a fixed number of witnesses. To be recorded, a conveyance had to be acknowledged by the person who signed it, before the Registrar of Conveyances, a notary, or a judge. If the grantor had not acknowledged it, the deed could still be recorded on the proof of a witness who had signed it, given before a judge; and if those witnesses were dead, by proof of the handwriting.³³ Recording is what made the deed good against a later buyer.³⁴

No statute set a minimum age for a deed witness. The test was competency, which is the same test the law used for a witness in court — whether the person understood what he was doing.³⁵ In practice witnesses were adults, because a witness might be called years later to prove the deed.

Native Hawaiian land rights

The kuleana grants and their reserved rights — to water, to gathering, and to access across the surrounding lands — were the property protections written for the makaʻāinana in 1850, and they generated their own claim and testimony records within the Land Commission files.²³ A great deal of land passed out of Native Hawaiian hands in the decades that followed: government lands were auctioned, kuleana went unclaimed, and later lawsuits stripped away more. The Land Commission Award and Royal Patent records are often the last place a family's original landholding is documented.

Inheritance

Land and personal property passed the same way

In Hawaii land and movable property passed under a single rule of descent.³⁶ When a person died without a will — died intestate — the Civil Code of 1859 divided the whole estate among the heirs.³⁷

The estate went to the nearest surviving relatives in a fixed order, and the scheme was symmetrical — a husband stood exactly where a widow would:³⁸

The widow's protection: dower

Where there were children, the widow's protection was not a fixed slice of the descent estate but her dower, which had two parts that worked differently.

In her husband's land she took the use of one-third for her lifetime, and ownership of that third passed to the heirs at her death. In his money and movable goods she took an outright third of what remained after his debts were paid.³⁹ Until her third of the land was formally set apart she could go on living on it, or take a third of the rents, so long as the heirs did not object. She could also stay in her husband's house for sixty days after his death without paying rent, with reasonable support out of his estate.⁴⁰ A wife divorced for her own misconduct lost her dower. That bar was rewritten in 1945, and by 1948 it turned instead on one spouse having deliberately deserted the other for at least a year before the death.⁴¹

The husband had a matching right called curtesy — a widower's use of his late wife's land for his lifetime. It was the narrower of the two rights: curtesy reached only the land she owned when she died, while dower reached every parcel her husband had held at any time during the marriage.⁴² After the Act of 1888, and again during the community-property years of 1945 to 1949, dower and curtesy reached only the property each spouse owned separately.³²

For four years an estate was divided differently. From 1 June 1945 to 30 June 1949 — or from the wedding day, for a couple who married inside that window — Hawaii ran a community-property system. Each spouse kept what he or she brought to the marriage, along with anything later received by gift or inheritance, but the earnings of both spouses and the income from their separate property were owned in equal halves. The system was abolished in 1949 without disturbing interests already established.⁵ So an estate settled in those four years may split the marital earnings before the descent and dower rules are applied. Before June 1945 and after June 1949, each spouse simply owned his or her own property.

Two further protections left their own papers in the probate file. Where her husband left a will, a widow could refuse what it gave her and take her dower instead, and a widower could do the same. And on a death the surviving spouse and the family members living in the household kept the home, the clothing, and the household goods, and the court ordered a reasonable allowance out of the estate for their support while it was being settled.⁴³

Minors and guardians

A minor inherited immediately, but the inheritance was managed by a guardian under the supervision of the probate court. The guardian gave a bond, made an inventory, accounted within the first year and afterward, and paid over the estate at the end.⁴⁴ A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property — most tellingly when a child inherited from someone other than a living father, which is exactly the situation that throws off a guardianship file naming the family.

The age of the minor controlled who chose the guardian, and that age moved once. Under the Civil Code the line was thirteen: for a minor under thirteen the probate judge appointed the guardian, while a minor over thirteen could nominate his own, subject to the judge’s approval. In 1913 the line rose to sixteen, on the same terms.⁴⁵ A guardianship record in which the child does the choosing is therefore evidence that the child had passed thirteen before 1913, and sixteen from 1913 on.

Guardianship ended at twenty for boys and girls alike. That is worth noticing, because until 1919 a girl reached full majority at eighteen: the guardianship section and the majority section set different ages, and the guardianship section governed the guardian's term.⁴⁶ A girl's marriage did end the guardianship of her person.⁴⁷ The guardian's final settlement, filed when the minor came of age, dates that majority and so approximates a birth year — one of the most useful documents in Hawaiian probate.⁴⁶

Through it all the father, and after him the mother, remained the natural guardian of the child's person and education, so the guardian of the estate was often a different person. A father could also name a guardian in his will.⁴⁸

Children born outside marriage

A child whose parents were not married was a bastard at law. The child inherited from the mother as if born in wedlock, but took nothing from the father unless the father left the child something by name in a will. Supporting the child until majority fell on the mother.⁴⁹

There was a route into the father's line. If the parents later married each other, the child became legitimate and inherited from the father like any other child.⁵⁰ By 1945 a paternity case could also be brought to have the father named and ordered to contribute to the child's support, and that file names him.⁵¹

Making a will

The age to make a will was twenty for a man and eighteen for a woman under the Civil Code, and twenty for everyone from 1890; it reached real and personal property alike.⁵² A married woman could dispose of her own property by will.⁵³

A valid will had to be in writing and signed by the will-maker, or by someone else in his presence and at his direction, and two or more competent witnesses had to sign their names in his presence.⁵⁴ Every will under the 1859 code took that one form.

No statute set a minimum age for a witness to a will. The requirement was competency, not age, and the same competency test applied that governed a witness in court.⁵⁵ There was one trap: a gift in the will to a person who signed as a witness was void unless two other competent witnesses had also signed. The interested witness could still prove the will; he simply lost the gift, except that a witness who would have inherited had there been no will kept that much of it.⁵⁶

Two events canceled a will. A later marriage together with the birth of a child revoked a will made earlier,⁵⁷ and an unmarried woman's will was revoked when she married.⁵⁸ A will also had to be proved within five years of the death, with an allowance where a minor had an interest.⁵⁹

The Civil Code fixed no age for an executor. An executor had to be capable of accepting the trust and of posting the bond the probate court required, which in practice meant a person of full age — twenty for a man, and eighteen for a woman until 1919. Where a will named a minor, the court gave the administration to a competent adult until he came of age. Territorial law kept the same silence on age. From 1943 it required instead that an executor, administrator, or guardian appointed by a Hawaii court be either a person living in the Territory or a trust company organized under its laws, and anyone already serving was left undisturbed. From 1888 a married woman could serve as executrix, administratrix, guardian, or trustee, and could bind the estate she represented without her husband's consent.⁶⁰

Taxation

Taxes before 1900

The first written tax law, of 27 December 1826, was paid in goods before there was a cash economy: each man owed his konohiki half a picul of sandalwood (about 67 pounds) or four Spanish dollars, and each woman a mat or one dollar.⁶¹ The Constitution of 1840 placed three taxes on the people under the King's direction: a poll tax (a flat tax on the person), a land tax, and a labor tax of three days' work each month, which could be paid off in money. Land forfeited for unpaid taxes went back to the King. The early poll tax fell on far more people than the later one. Under the tax act of 1842 a man owed a dollar, a woman half a dollar, a boy a quarter, and a girl an eighth, reaching adults and children above fourteen, with feeble old men and women exempt altogether. It could be paid in money or in goods — arrowroot, cotton, sugar, or nets. The land tax was reckoned on farms and paid in swine measured by length, or in money.⁶² A tax list from the 1840s or 1850s therefore names women and older children, where an 1880s list names only men.

By the internal-tax law compiled in the 1880s, four taxes fell on the individual, each with its own age bracket:⁶³

Dogs were taxed a dollar, and carts, carriages, and wagons by the vehicle. Exemption from the poll, school, and road taxes ran to the infirm, the poor, and students. Occupation had bought exemption earlier. From 1 January 1855 no one was exempt from a government tax for being a clergyman, a missionary, a missionary's servant, a school inspector, a trustee, or a constable.⁶³

Read the brackets as a rough life-course: a man entered the poll and road lists at 17 and the school list at 20, dropped off the road list at 50, and left the poll and school lists at 60 — or earlier, by an assessor's exemption. Because the poll tax reached men who owned nothing, these lists name men no property roll would catch.

Taxes from 1900

From 1900 the mainstays were the real and personal property taxes. A net income tax was added in 1901, at two percent on individual income over $1,000 and on corporate net profits.⁶⁴

The three taxes on the person carried over after 1900 as the poll, school, and road taxes, known together as the personal taxes — but the ages changed. The poll tax was a dollar a year on every male inhabitant between twenty and sixty. A young man who would have appeared on an 1880s poll list at seventeen therefore did not appear on one after 1900 until he turned twenty.⁶⁵

From 1923 a woman with an income of her own was liable on the same terms, which is why women begin to appear on the personal tax rolls in the 1920s. The Attorney General read "independent income" to mean an income that supported her without outside help — his examples were teachers, stenographers, and nurses — and not the occasional dollar earned by a woman her husband supported. Exemptions ran to the very young and the old, to firemen, soldiers, and clergymen, and to the infirm, the poor, and people with leprosy.⁶⁵

The poll tax, which by then had absorbed the school and road taxes, was reset in 1932 as a five-dollar tax on employees and was abolished in 1943. A separate tax on wages, salaries, and dividends was enacted for relief funds in 1933, and the personal property tax was abolished in 1947.⁶⁶

Whether the tax touched the vote depends on the era. From 1864 to 1893 it did: under the constitutions of 1864 and 1887 a man could not vote unless he had paid his taxes, so a tax roll and a register of voters from those years are linked records, and a man missing from one may be missing from the other.⁶⁷ The poll tax after 1900 carried no such condition, so its rolls track residence and employment rather than the franchise.

Courts

Jury service

In the Kingdom and the Republic, juries were drawn along lines of nationality, and no statute set an age, property, or literacy test for a juror. Each governor, working with a judge, simply drew up the lists of the men he thought competent to serve: one hundred native Hawaiians every January for his own division, and, for Oahu and Maui, fifty foreigners each March and September.⁶⁸

Which list a case drew from depended on who the parties were. A native Hawaiian accused of a crime was tried by a jury of natives, and a naturalized foreigner by a jury of foreigners. In a civil case between a Hawaiian and a foreigner the jury was half drawn from each list, unless both sides agreed to give up the right to a mixed jury. A man still an alien could ask the court to invite his consul to propose a panel of thirty-six names. Juries were of twelve.⁶⁸

Annexation changed the rule. The Organic Act of 1900 abolished the race- and nationality-based jury laws and provided that juries would be constituted without reference to race or place of nativity — but it limited jurors to United States citizens, twenty-one years of age, literate in English.⁶⁹ That requirement had a sharp effect on the Territory's large immigrant population. Federal law barred many Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino residents from becoming citizens at all, so they could not sit on a jury whatever their standing in the community. Women were not eligible for jury service in Hawaii at any point through 1950; as of 1948 a juror still had to be a male citizen of twenty-one or over.⁷⁰ Congress struck the word "male" out of the Organic Act on 1 April 1952, and women became eligible from that date.⁷¹

Criminal responsibility

Hawaii fixed the age of criminal responsibility by statute:⁷²

In the middle band the child's capacity was an open question of fact, decided on the evidence of the particular child's intelligence and understanding, with the burden resting on neither side.

Witnesses

No age shut a witness out. Anyone could testify who understood the obligation of an oath and could tell the court what he or she had seen. The judge questioned a child personally before taking the testimony, and how much weight a young child's word carried was for the court to decide; it was not a bar to testifying at all.⁷³

Because Hawaii's law of evidence turned on understanding rather than on who the witness was, women were competent witnesses throughout the period, and a person of any race could testify. Jury service was the narrower door. After 1900 the Organic Act confined it to male United States citizens of twenty-one who could speak, read, and write English, which left out most first-generation Asian immigrants and every woman — though a woman still remained a competent witness.⁷⁴

Sources and Where to Verify

Constitutions

• Hawaii. Constitutions of the Hawaiian Kingdom, 1840, 1852, 1864, and 1887; with the Declaration of Rights, 1839. The Constitution of 1840 sets out the poll, land, and labor taxes. The Constitution of 1864, art. 62, and the Constitution of 1887, arts. 59 and 62, make payment of taxes a qualification to vote. Digital images. Hawaiian Kingdom. https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org. Transcriptions. Hawaiian Independence. http://www.hawaii-nation.org/constitution-1864.html and http://www.hawaii-nation.org/constitution-1887.html.
• Republic of Hawaii. Constitution of the Republic of Hawaii, 1894. Digital images. Hawaiian Kingdom. https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org.
• United States. Hawaiian Organic Act, Act of 30 April 1900, ch. 339, 31 Stat. 141. Section 4 governs citizenship and section 83 the constitution of juries. Section 83 was amended by the Act of April 1, 1952, ch. 127, 66 Stat. 32, which removed the restriction of jury service to male citizens. Section 73 governs the public lands; its subsections (f), (g), and (l) — later 48 U.S.C. §§ 1509, 1510, and 1512 — set the terms on which an alien could take a homestead interest in public land, restricted the transfer of public land to aliens, and authorized the sale of agricultural land for residential purposes to persons who had declared an intention to become citizens. These reach the public lands only and leave the conveyancing of private land alone. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/us_stat_31.

Codes and Compilations

• Hawaii. Hawaii Revised Statutes (current). Each section is printed with the line of descent behind it, naming every amending act and every earlier code section in order, back to the Civil Code of 1859. Each section is also printed with case notes digesting the decisions on it, which is how the Territorial and Kingdom case law is reached. Hawaii State Legislature. https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrsall/.
• Hawaii. The Civil Code of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed in the Year of Our Lord 1859. Honolulu: Printed for the Government, 1859. The essential Kingdom volume; the section numbers used throughout this guide are its numbers. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/civilcodehawaii00armsgoog. Catalog record. HathiTrust. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011606226.
• Hawaii. Compiled Laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Honolulu: Printed at the Hawaiian Gazette Office, 1884. The Civil Code of 1859 as amended through 1884, retaining its section numbers, with later acts reprinted in place. Reprints the later acts in place, including the marriage act of 1872, ch. XXIII. Digital images, by title. Hawaiian Kingdom. https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/civilcode/.
• Hawaii. The Penal Code of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Compiled from the Penal Code of 1850 and the Various Penal Enactments Since Made. Honolulu, Oahu: Printed at the Govt. Press, 1869. The source of the age-of-criminal-responsibility rule. Digital images. Hawaiian Kingdom. https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/pdf/Penal_Code.pdf.
• Hawaii. The Penal Laws of the Hawaiian Islands, 1897: Compiled from the Penal Code of 1869 and the Session Laws of 1870 to 1896 Inclusive. Honolulu: Hawaiian Gazette Print, 1897. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/penalcodehawaii00hawagoog.
• Hawaii. Revised Laws of Hawaii. Honolulu, T.H.: Hawaiian Gazette, 1905; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Ltd., 1915 and 1925; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1935 and 1945. The codes in force for the Territorial decades. The 1945 edition, published by authority and stating the law as of 1 January 1945, is the volume behind every Territorial section cited here. Excerpt. ScholarSpace, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/3b25431c-cefd-436a-a13a-9595ac78a4f3/content.
• United States. United States Code, title 48 (Territories and Insular Possessions), ch. 11 (“Alien Owners of Land”), §§ 1501–1508. The federal alien land act of 3 March 1887, as amended in 1897, which governed private landholding by aliens in the Territory. Section 1502 carries the exception that decides most cases: an alien who was a bona fide resident of the United States held land on the same terms as a citizen. The Territorial test was therefore residence, not eligibility for citizenship — the reverse of the alien land laws enacted in California and other mainland states, and the reason an immigrant barred from naturalization could still buy land in Hawaii. Sections 1509–1512, which carried the Hawaii public-land provisions of the Organic Act, are printed as omitted on statehood, with their statutory history. Digital text. Office of the Law Revision Counsel. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title48/chapter11&edition=prelim.

Session Laws and Land Records

• Hawaii. Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1851. Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1851. Carries the amendment to the Kuleana Act at pp. 98–99.
• Hawaii. Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1854. Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1854. Carries the dissolution of the Land Commission at p. 21, the amendment of the alien land act at p. 15, and the repeal of the tax exemptions at p. 34. Photo-facsimile reprint, Washington, D.C.: Statute Law Book Co., 1930.
• Hawaii. Laws of the Territory of Hawaii Passed by the Twenty-Fourth Legislature, Regular Session, 1947. Honolulu, 1947. Carries Act 57, series D-176, amending the paternity-proceedings chapter, at pp. 393–396. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws.
• Hawaii. Laws of the Territory of Hawaii Passed by the Twenty-Third Legislature, Regular Session, 1945. Honolulu: Printed by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1945. Published by authority under the direction of the Secretary of Hawaii; carries the Community Property Act as Act 273, series D-201.
• Hawaii. Penal Code of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the House of Nobles and Representatives on the 21st of June, A.D. 1850, to which are Appended the Other Acts Passed by the House of Nobles and Representatives during their General Session for 1850. Honolulu, Oahu: Printed by Henry M. Whitney, Government Press, 1850. The 1850 session laws follow the code: the alien land act at pp. 146–147 and the Kuleana Act at pp. 202–204. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/penalcodehawaii00unkngoog.
• Hawaii. Session Laws of Hawaii. Honolulu, 1903–1951. The Territorial marriage acts read for this guide: Act 28 (1903) and Act 42 (1907), re-enacting the ages of seventeen and fourteen; Act 8 (1913), raising them to eighteen and fifteen; Act 104 (1929), setting parental consent at twenty for both sexes; Act 59 (1937), raising the female age to sixteen; and Act 122 (1939), permitting a female of fifteen to marry on a judge’s written approval. Also Act 10 (1913), raising to sixteen the age at which a minor could nominate his own guardian, and Act 182 (1943), requiring an executor, administrator, or guardian to reside in the Territory. The 1951 volume (Honolulu: Printed by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Limited, 1951) carries cumulative notes for 1945, 1947, 1949, and 1951, and is the source for the disposition of the Community Property Act by Act 242 of 1949. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws.
• Hawaii. Session Laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the Republic, and the Territory. The open-access run covers the sessions from 1848 forward, with searchable text for most of them. The Act of 1919, ch. 116, and Act 242 of 1949 are traced through the line of descent printed with the section in the current statutes, which names each amending act in order; the marriage act of 1872 is reprinted in the Compiled Laws of 1884; and the effective date of Act 242 of 1949 is given in Santos v. Commissioner and in the annotations to chapter 510 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws.
• Hawaii. Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Houses of Nobles and Representatives, During the Twenty-First Year of His Reign, and the Third and Fourth Years of His Public Recognition, A.D. 1845 and 1846. Vol. 1. Honolulu, Oahu: Charles E. Hitchcock, Printer, Government Press, 1846. The Second Act of Kamehameha III: the marriage contract at pp. 49–50, coverture and dower at p. 59, aliens at pp. 77–78, and the Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles at p. 107. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/statutelawshism00ricogoog. Also Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=AXUDAAAAQAAJ.
• Hawaii. Translation of the Constitution and Laws of the Hawaiian Islands, Established in the Reign [of] Kamehameha III. Lahainaluna, 1842. Carries the Constitution of 1840 and the tax act of 1842 at pp. 24–26. Photo-facsimile reprint, Washington, D.C.: Statute Law Book Co., 1934. Digital images. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=6XxLAQAAIAAJ.
• Land Commission. Mahele and Kuleana Records. Digital images and transcriptions. AVA Konohiki. https://avakonohiki.weebly.com/hawaii-land-documents.html.
• Land Commission. The Great Mahele Book, the Land Commission Awards, the Native and Foreign Testimony Registers, and the Royal Patents. Digital images and index. Papakilo Database. https://www.papakilodatabase.com.
• United States. Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, 1920. Ch. 42, 42 Stat. 108, approved 9 July 1921. Set aside public land as Hawaiian home lands and authorized homestead leases of ninety-nine years, at a rent of one dollar a year, to applicants having at least one-half Hawaiian blood. Note the two dates: the act is styled 1920 but was approved in 1921, so a search under either year may be needed. Because the award is a lease and not a conveyance, the record is the application and lease file rather than a recorded deed, and the proof of descent an applicant had to supply is often preserved with it. Text as amended, and the administering agency’s guide to it. Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. https://dhhl.hawaii.gov/hhc/laws-and-rules/.

Court Cases

• Bishop Trust Co. v. Thomas. 32 Haw. 140 (1931).
• Cummins v. Wond. 6 Haw. 69 (1872).
• First National Bank v. Gaines. 16 Haw. 731 (1905).
• Holt v. Kaaukai. 11 Haw. 497 (1898).
• McCandless v. Lansing. 19 Haw. 474 (1909).
• Naweli v. Auld. 6 Haw. 297 (1881).
• Matter of Estate of Glover. 45 Haw. 569, 371 P.2d 361 (1962).
• Oni v. Meek. 2 Haw. 87 (1858).
• Republic v. Ah Wong. 10 Haw. 524 (1896).
• 25 Haw. 397 (1920). The decision holding that a license, not a ceremony, makes a Hawaiian marriage, and that failure to get one is a ground for annulment. It is digested in the case notes printed with HRS §§ 1-1, 572-1, 572-12, and 580-21. Hawaii State Legislature. https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol12_Ch0501-0588/HRS0572/HRS_0572-0001.htm.
• Santos v. Commissioner. 26 T.C. 571 (1956), aff’d 246 F.2d 204 (9th Cir. 1957).
• United States v. Sai. 1 U.S.D.C. Haw. 118 (1901).
• Zupplein v. Austin. 6 Haw. 8 (1867).

Secondary and Reference Works

• Chinen, Jon J. The Great Mahele: Hawaii's Land Division of 1848. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1958. The standard account of the Mahele, the Land Commission, and the Kuleana Act.
• Chinen, Jon J. Original Land Titles in Hawaii. Honolulu: J. J. Chinen, 1961.
• FamilySearch. “Hawaii Taxation.” Research guide to the surviving tax records: the Hawaii State Archives holds personal and property tax records for Hawaii (1855–93), Kauai (1855–92), Lanai (1855–92), Maui (1887–92), Molokai (1855–92), and Oahu (1855–1929); the records are incomplete and unindexed, the earliest of them poll-tax lists only, and they are arranged by island division. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Hawaii_Taxation. The same holdings are given by Radford, Dwight A. “Hawaii Tax Records,” from Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources, https://wiki.rootsweb.com/wiki/index.php/Hawaii_Tax_Records.
• Hawai‘i State Archives. “Genealogy Research Guide” and “Description of Collections.” The archive’s own guide to its Kingdom, Provisional, Republic, Territory, and State records, including the 19th- and early 20th-century probate, will, and divorce case files. https://ags.hawaii.gov/archives/about-us/genealogy-research-guide/.
• “How Hawaii Got Its Tax System.” Honolulu Record, vol. 9, no. 26, summarizing the work of the economist Robert M. Kamins. Digital text. University of Hawaii—West Oahu, Center for Labor Education and Research. https://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord/articles/v9n26/How%20Hawaii%20Got%20Its%20Tax%20System.html.
• “Poll Tax.” Images of Old Hawaii. https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/poll-tax/.
• Hawaii. Attorney General. Opinion No. 1163, 24 August 1924. Quotes and construes Revised Laws of Hawaii, §§ 1224–1226, the poll, school, and road taxes, as amended by Act 226 of 1923. The best single statement of who paid a personal tax in the Territory and at what ages. Digital images. Hawaii Department of Taxation. https://files.hawaii.gov/tax/legal/agop/1920_29/OP1163.PDF.
• Tax Foundation of Hawaii. “Evolution of the Tax System in Hawaii.” A dated summary of the Territorial and State tax changes, used here only for the sequence of twentieth-century enactments. https://www.tfhawaii.org/wordpress/blog/evolution-of-the-tax-system-in-hawaii/.
• United States Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America as of January 1, 1948: Reports and Summary for the Territories and Possessions. Bulletin 157-50. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951. Compiled by Sara L. Buchanan and others; a digest of Hawaii law on majority, married women's property, dower, curtesy, wills, intestacy, guardianship, marriage, and jury service, with citations to the Revised Laws of 1945. An addendum bringing Hawaii to 1 January 1954 was issued in 1956, and a later Report for Hawaii, Bulletin 157-52, states the law as of 1 January 1959. Catalog record. HathiTrust. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011418560. The 1959 report is the volume read for this guide: The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Hawaii as of January 1, 1959. Bulletin 157-52. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959. Digital images. FRASER. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-52_dolwb_1959.pdf.
• University of Hawaii, William S. Richardson School of Law. “Hawaii Legal History” and “Kingdom Laws.” Research guides linking the Kingdom, Republic, and Territory session laws and codes. https://law-hawaii.libguides.com/hawaiilegalhistory.

Citations

1. Act of 25 November 1892, ch. 57, § 5 (“An Act to Reorganize the Judiciary Department”). The rule was carried from that act through an amendment of 1903, ch. 32, § 2, into the Revised Laws of Hawaii of 1925, 1935, and 1945, each at § 1, and stands now at HRS § 1-1. The courts read the “Hawaiian usage” preserved by the statute to mean a usage fixed before 25 November 1892. The chain is confirmed by the history line printed at Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945 (Honolulu, T.H.: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1945), § 1; catalog record, HathiTrust (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011606226 : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩
2. Oni v. Meek, 2 Haw. 87 (1858). ↩
3. The Civil Code of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed in the Year of Our Lord 1859 (Honolulu: Printed for the Government, 1859), § 1287 (the wife merged in her husband and civilly dead, without power to contract or convey without his consent; she may not sue or be sued without joining him, is never liable to imprisonment in a civil action, and the husband answers in damages for her torts) and § 1286 (the husband takes her movable property and manages her land); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/civilcodehawaii00armsgoog : accessed 27 July 2026). Carried from the Second Act of Kamehameha III, “An Act to Organize the Executive Departments,” pt. I, ch. IV, art. I, at p. 59 of Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands ... A.D. 1845 and 1846, vol. 1 (Honolulu, Oahu: Charles E. Hitchcock, Printer, Government Press, 1846); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutelawshism00ricogoog : accessed 4 August 2026). ↩
4. Married Women's Property Act of 1888, ch. 11 (effective 23 June 1888), its chapter confirmed by the history lines at Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, §§ 12365 and 12368; carried into Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, §§ 12365–12370; and see First National Bank v. Gaines, 16 Haw. 731 (1905) (the common-law unity of husband and wife destroyed). ↩ ↩
5. Act 273, series D-201, “An Act Relating to Community Property,” approved 22 May 1945, printed in Laws of the Territory of Hawaii Passed by the Twenty-Third Legislature, Regular Session, 1945 (Honolulu: Printed by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1945); § 1 added ch. 301A to the Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, at §§ 12391.01 ff. Property owned before the marriage or before the effective date, and anything later taken by gift, devise, bequest, or descent, stayed separate (§ 12391.02); the earnings of both spouses and the income of each one’s separate property became community property held in equal undivided halves (§ 12391.04). The community began on 1 June 1945, or on the marriage if that came later — the rule survives at HRS § 510-8(g). Repealed by Act 242 of 1949, series D-296, effective 30 June 1949, the repeal leaving interests already established undivested and keeping the income of community property held at dissolution as community property: Santos v. Commissioner, 26 T.C. 571 (1956), aff’d 246 F.2d 204 (9th Cir. 1957); and see the annotations to HRS ch. 510, Hawaii State Legislature (https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol12_Ch0501-0588/HRS0510/HRS_0510-.htm : accessed 4 August 2026). ↩ ↩
6. Civil Code of 1859, § 1487 (ch. XXXVII, “Of Legal Majority”): males of twenty years and females of eighteen residing in the kingdom are of legal age, their minority having ceased. The whole line of descent is printed with the section as it stands today: Civil Code of 1859, § 1487, amended by the Act of 1919, ch. 116, § 1, which equalized the age at twenty; Revised Laws of 1925, § 3032, and of 1935, § 4510; Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12261; Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1955, § 330-1; now HRS § 577-1, lowered to eighteen by the Act of 1972, ch. 2, § 1. Hawaii State Legislature (https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol12_Ch0501-0588/HRS0577/HRS_0577-0001.htm : accessed 4 August 2026). ↩ ↩
7. Second Act of Kamehameha III, pt. I, ch. IV, art. I (“Of the Marriage Contract”), § VII, in Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands ... A.D. 1845 and 1846, vol. 1 (Honolulu, Oahu: Charles E. Hitchcock, Printer, Government Press, 1846): the husband of a valid marriage is liable for the support of its children “until they severally attain the age of twenty years, when his liability shall cease,” and controls and manages them during their minority. The same act uses the phrase “the age of legal majority” elsewhere without defining it, as in pt. III, ch. VII, on the corruption of children. The first Hawaiian statute to state the ages is Civil Code of 1859, § 1487. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutelawshism00ricogoog : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
8. McCandless v. Lansing, 19 Haw. 474 (1909) (a minor's contract or deed is voidable and may be disaffirmed within a reasonable time after majority). ↩ ↩
9. Second Act of Kamehameha III, “An Act to Organize the Executive Departments,” pt. I, ch. IV, art. I, §§ I–II (“Of the Marriage Contract”), at pp. 49–50 of Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands ... A.D. 1845 and 1846, vol. 1 (Honolulu, Oahu: Charles E. Hitchcock, Printer, Government Press, 1846): the parties not within the fourth degree of consanguinity; the male at least seventeen and the female at least fourteen; neither having an undivorced spouse living; the marriage of a native female subject to a male foreigner coming here to reside valid only where the foreigner has first been duly naturalized by taking the oath of allegiance; and no marriage lawful without a license first obtained from the governor of the island where the female party has her domicile. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutelawshism00ricogoog : accessed 4 August 2026). Restated at Civil Code of 1859, § 1284, the license now issued by the appointed agent. The marriage-contracts act of 1872, ch. XXIII, § 1, states four conditions only — the fourth degree, the ages of seventeen and fourteen, no lawful spouse living, and a license from the appointed agent — and its § 2 repealed § 1284 of the Civil Code and ch. XXIV of the laws of 1870, so the naturalization requirement ends there; reprinted in place at Compiled Laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom (Honolulu: Printed at the Hawaiian Gazette Office, 1884), tit. 5, art. LIII, Hawaiian Kingdom (https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/civilcode/pdf/CL_Title_5.pdf : accessed 4 August 2026). The Territory re-enacted the ages by Act 28 (1903) and Act 42 (1907) and raised them to eighteen and fifteen by Act 8, § 1, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1913 (approved 8 March 1913), amending R.L.H. § 2207. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
10. Second Act of Kamehameha III, “An Act to Organize the Executive Departments,” pt. I, ch. IV, art. I (“Of the Marriage Contract”), § I, at pp. 49–50 of Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands ... A.D. 1845 and 1846, vol. 1 (Honolulu, Oahu: Charles E. Hitchcock, Printer, Government Press, 1846). The section states four conditions only — that the parties be outside the fourth degree of consanguinity, that the male be at least seventeen and the female at least fourteen, that neither have an undivorced spouse living, and that a license be obtained from the governor of the island where the woman is domiciled — and requires no parental consent. Consent first appears at Civil Code of 1859, § 1291. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/statutelawshism00ricogoog : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
11. Civil Code of 1859, § 1291 (the written consent of the parent, guardian, or other person having the care of the minor, where the male is under twenty or the female under eighteen and within the kingdom). The consent age became twenty for both parties in 1929, and the section stood as Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1935, § 4631. By Act 122 (H.B. 356), approved 28 April 1939, a female who had turned fifteen but not sixteen could marry “with the written approval of the circuit judge having jurisdiction over juvenile cases in the circuit within which she shall reside,” subject to the consent section; read against Session Laws of Hawaii, 1939; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 4 August 2026). ↩
12. The marrying ages and their whole line of descent are printed with the section as it stands today: the Act of 1872, ch. 23, § 1, amended by the Acts of 1903, ch. 28, § 1, and 1907, ch. 42, § 1, and by the Act of 1913, ch. 8, § 1 (the male at least eighteen and the female at least fifteen, the parties not within the fourth degree of consanguinity, neither having a lawful spouse living, and a license from the agent appointed in the judicial district where the marriage is to be celebrated, effective on approval); Revised Laws of 1925, § 2943, and of 1935, § 4630, as amended by the Acts of 1935, ch. 185, § 1, of 1937, ch. 59, § 1 (raising the minimum for women to sixteen), and of 1939, ch. 122, § 1; Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12351; now HRS § 572-1. Hawaii State Legislature (https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol12_Ch0501-0588/HRS0572/HRS_0572-0001.htm : accessed 4 August 2026). The acts of 1913, 1937, and 1939 were read against their own session volumes; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 4 August 2026). And see the case note printed with the section, that a marriage by a girl under fourteen was only voidable, 6 Haw. 289 (1881). ↩ ↩
13. Civil Code of 1859, § 1284 (it shall in no case be lawful to marry in this kingdom without a license first obtained), carried through the marriage act of 1872, ch. XXIII, § 1, to Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12351, and now HRS § 572-1. The case notes printed with HRS § 572-1 state that a license is a prerequisite to a valid marriage, citing 25 Haw. 397 (1920) and 295 F. 636 (1924); those printed with HRS § 572-12 state that no ceremony is necessary but a license is, citing 25 Haw. 397, reversing 16 Haw. 377; and those printed with HRS § 580-21 record that the failure to get a license was held a ground for annulment, citing the same case. Hawaii State Legislature (https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol12_Ch0501-0588/HRS0572/HRS_0572-0001.htm : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
14. The case note printed with HRS § 1-1 states that marriage is controlled by statute and that there is no common-law marriage, citing 25 Haw. 397; Hawaii State Legislature (https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol01_Ch0001-0042F/HRS0001/HRS_0001-0001.htm : accessed 8 August 2026). For the rule as it stood at the end of the period, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Hawaii as of January 1, 1959, Women’s Bureau Bulletin 157-52 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), § 19 (“Common-law marriage”): a marriage contracted within the jurisdiction is not recognized as valid unless a license has been obtained as the law requires. On the presumption of a license from the fact of a marriage, see the case note at HRS § 572-1 citing 16 Haw. 502 (1905). Digital images, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-52_dolwb_1959.pdf : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩ ↩
15. Civil Code of 1859, § 1290 (marriages legal in the country where contracted are valid in the Kingdom). ↩
16. Civil Code of 1859, §§ 1283, 1285 (marriage unlawful without a license from the appointed agent; the rite performed by a person authorized by law on presentation of the license); now HRS §§ 572-11, 572-12. ↩
17. Civil Code of 1859, the marriage-proof act following § 1285, §§ 1–3 (every officiant to keep a record of each marriage and deliver a signed certificate to the parties). ↩
18. Civil Code of 1859, § 1284, and the marriage act of 1872, ch. XXIII, § 1, each state the conditions of a valid marriage — kinship, age, no living spouse, and a license — without reference to the race of either party; so does the Territorial section carried to Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12351, and now HRS § 572-1, whose case notes record no decision on a racial bar. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Hawaii as of January 1, 1959, Women’s Bureau Bulletin 157-52 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), §§ 18–20, digests the Territorial marriage requirements and names no racial restriction. Digital images, Hawaii State Legislature (https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol12_Ch0501-0588/HRS0572/HRS_0572-0001.htm : accessed 8 August 2026) and FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-52_dolwb_1959.pdf : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
19. Chinen, Jon J., The Great Mahele: Hawaii’s Land Division of 1848 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1958), 3–7, on the pre-1848 tenure: the ruler held all land and allotted its use through the konohiki to the makaʻāinana, who owed labor and a share of the crop. And see Oni v. Meek, 2 Haw. 87 (1858) (a tenant’s claim by ancient custom fails where the statute does not preserve it). ↩
20. Chinen, The Great Mahele, 16–31, on the division signed between late January and early March 1848 by the King and some 245 chiefs and konohiki, carrying out the Privy Council land resolutions of that year. The Mahele Book itself is digitized: AVA Konohiki (https://avakonohiki.weebly.com/hawaii-land-documents.html : accessed 8 August 2026) and Papakilo Database (https://www.papakilodatabase.com : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
21. The Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles (the Land Commission) was created by the Second Act of Kamehameha III, pt. I, ch. VII, art. IV, at p. 107 of the 1846 Statute Laws, vol. 1: five commissioners to investigate and finally allow or reject all private claims to land acquired before the act, deciding by native usage as to landed tenures as well as by the civil law, with a claim barred if not filed within two years, and an award perfected into fee title by a Royal Patent on payment of a commutation. An award not appealed within ninety days was made final and binding, and the Board was dissolved on 31 March 1855, by the Act of 20 July 1854, §§ 1–4, printed at Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1854 (Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1854), p. 21. ↩
22. Act of 6 August 1850 (the Kuleana Act), §§ 1–7, printed at pp. 202–204 of Penal Code of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the House of Nobles and Representatives on the 21st of June, A.D. 1850, to which are Appended the Other Acts Passed ... during their General Session for 1850 (Honolulu, Oahu: Printed by Henry M. Whitney, Government Press, 1850): fee-simple titles to native tenants for the land they occupied and improved (§§ 1–3); government land set apart in lots of one to fifty acres at a minimum of fifty cents an acre for natives not otherwise supplied with land (§ 4); a house lot capped at a quarter-acre (§ 5); and a grant of kalo ground limited to what the claimant had really cultivated (§ 6). Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/penalcodehawaii00unkngoog : accessed 27 July 2026), and in the Session Laws of Hawaii collection (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 4 August 2026). ↩ ↩
23. Kuleana Act, § 7, at p. 203: the people on each land are not to be deprived of the right to take firewood, house timber, aho cord, thatch, or ti leaf from the land they live on for their own private use, nor of drinking water, running water, and the right of way. As first passed the section also required the tenant to inform the landlord and proceed with his consent; an amending act approved 11 July 1851, reciting that konohiki had used that clause to forbid tenants the benefits the law had given them, struck it out and re-enacted the section without it, at pp. 98–99 of Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1851 (Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1851). The reserved rights survive as HRS § 7-1. ↩ ↩
24. Act of 10 July 1850, “An Act to Abolish the Disabilities of Aliens to Acquire and Convey Lands in Fee Simple,” at pp. 146–147 of the 1850 Penal Code volume cited above. Section 1 let any alien resident in the islands acquire and hold a fee-simple estate and convey it to a Hawaiian subject or another resident alien, on condition that he submit any dispute over his title to the kingdom’s own courts, on pain of forfeiture and escheat, and provided that no conveyance of fee-simple land to an alien was valid unless it contained that clause. The closing proviso was repealed by the amending act of 28 June 1854, printed at Laws ... 1854, p. 15, which allowed two months for any objection founded on its omission. Before July 1850 a domiciled alien could take and transmit an inheritance in land only “less than allodial or fee simple,” and had first to obtain a Certificate of Nationality from the Minister of the Interior: 1846 Statute Laws, vol. 1, pt. I, ch. V, art. I, §§ 6–8, at pp. 77–78. The act’s remaining condition — that an alien owner convey only to a Hawaiian subject or to another resident alien — is not repealed by the 1854 amendment, which reached the forfeiture clause alone, and no later repealing act has been found. The condition was framed in terms of Hawaiian subjecthood and so lost its object at annexation, when that status ended and the question passed to federal law; from 1900 the governing rules are those at citations 25 and 26 below. A researcher who needs the point settled for a particular Kingdom-era deed should read the section as reprinted in the Compiled Laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom (1884), which prints the Kingdom statutes as they then stood. ↩
25. Act of 3 March 1887, ch. 340, 24 Stat. 476, amended by the Act of 2 March 1897, ch. 363, 29 Stat. 618, codified at 48 U.S.C. §§ 1501–1508 (“Alien Owners of Land”). § 1501 barred an alien who was not a citizen, and who had not declared his intention to become one, from acquiring title to land in a Territory of the United States. § 1502 then excepted “any alien who shall become a bona fide resident of the United States,” who might “acquire and hold lands in either of the Territories of the United States upon the same terms as citizens of the United States,” and also excepted lots in an incorporated or platted city, town, or village and any mine or mining claim; a resident alien who ceased to be a resident had ten years to sell. § 1503 allowed an alien to take land by inheritance or in the collection of a debt, on condition of a sale within ten years or escheat. The residence test, rather than eligibility for citizenship, is what distinguishes the Territorial rule from the alien land laws of California and the mainland states that followed it. Digital text, Office of the Law Revision Counsel, United States Code (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title48/chapter11&edition=prelim : accessed 10 August 2026). ↩
26. Hawaiian Organic Act, Act of 30 April 1900, ch. 339, § 73(f), (g), (l), 31 Stat. 154, amended by the Act of 27 May 1910, ch. 258, § 5, 36 Stat. 444, and the Act of 9 July 1921, ch. 42, §§ 304, 308, 42 Stat. 117–118; formerly codified at 48 U.S.C. §§ 1509, 1510, 1512, and omitted from the Code on statehood. Subsection (f) set the requirements an alien had to meet to receive a certificate of occupation, right of purchase lease, cash freehold agreement, or special homestead agreement in the public lands of Hawaii; subsection (g) restricted the conveyance or other transfer of public lands to aliens; and subsection (l) authorized the sale of agricultural land for residential purposes to persons who had declared their intention to become citizens. These sections reached the public lands only and left the ordinary conveyancing of private land alone, which is why an immigrant family may appear in the conveyance books and not in the homestead files. Digital text, Office of the Law Revision Counsel, United States Code (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title48/chapter11&edition=prelim : accessed 10 August 2026). ↩
27. Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, 1920, passed by Congress and approved 9 July 1921, ch. 42, 42 Stat. 108. The act set aside public land as Hawaiian home lands and authorized homestead leases of ninety-nine years at a rent of one dollar a year to native Hawaiians, defined by the act as persons having at least one-half Hawaiian blood. Note the two dates: the act is styled “1920” but was approved in 1921. The award is a lease and not a fee-simple title, so it is documented by the application and lease file rather than by a recorded conveyance, and the proof of descent required of an applicant is often preserved with it. Digital images and text, Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (https://dhhl.hawaii.gov/hhc/laws-and-rules/ : accessed 10 August 2026), with the act as amended at https://dhhl.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Hawaiian-Homes-Commission-Act-1921-As-Ammended-Searchable.pdf. ↩
28. Civil Code of 1859, § 1286 (the husband takes the wife’s movable property and manages her land, which he conveys only with her written consent, but which is not liable for his debts and descends to her heirs) and § 1464 (a married woman may dispose of her property by will); the protection is older than the Code, the 1846 article providing at p. 59 that her immovable and fixed property was not liable to be sold for her husband’s debts. On a wife’s conveyance without her husband, Naweli v. Auld, 6 Haw. 297 (1881): a deed she executes without his joinder is void and conveys nothing, and his later death does not cure it. And see Cummins v. Wond, 6 Haw. 69 (1872), and Holt v. Kaaukai, 11 Haw. 497 (1898). ↩ ↩
29. Civil Code of 1859, § 1299 (dower in one-third of all lands owned by the husband at any time during marriage); § 1308 (a woman bars her dower by joining the husband's deed and releasing her claim). The rule is older than the Code: the same two-part dower appears in the marriage-contract article of 1846, at Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands... A.D. 1845 and 1846, vol. 1, p. 59, which entitled the wife on her husband's death to a life estate in one-third of all immovable and fixed property he owned at the time of the marriage or acquired during it, and to an absolute property in one-third of his movable effects in possession or reducible to possession at his death, after payment of all his just debts. ↩
30. Civil Code of 1859, § 1256 (no release of dower by an undivorced wife is valid without her acknowledgment, apart from her husband, before the Registrar of Conveyances). ↩
31. Civil Code of 1859, § 1302 (no dower against a mortgagee for the purchase money, even where the wife did not join); now HRS § 533-4. ↩
32. Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, §§ 12100 and 12115, as amended by Act 273 of 1945, §§ 3–4: the interests those sections give a wife in her husband’s property, and a husband in his wife’s, do not reach the other’s share of community property. On death, ch. 301A, § 12391.15, applied the probate law to community as well as separate property, left the judge to determine what was community and what was separate, and charged claims and administration expenses paid out of the community equally against both halves, excepting the survivor’s half from death taxes on the decedent’s interest. ↩ ↩
33. Civil Code of 1859, § 1255 (to be recorded, a conveyance must be acknowledged by the party executing it before the Registrar of Conveyances, his agent, a judge of a court of record, or a notary; if a party dies, leaves the kingdom, or refuses to acknowledge, the deed may be recorded on proof of its execution by a subscribing witness before a judge of a court of record; and if all the subscribing witnesses are dead or absent, on proof of the grantor’s handwriting). ↩
34. Civil Code of 1859, § 1262 (all deeds, leases for more than one year, and other conveyances of real estate must be recorded in the office of the Registrar of Conveyances, and a conveyance not so recorded is void as against a later purchaser in good faith and for value, without actual notice, whose conveyance is first recorded); § 1260 (an instrument is recorded as of the time it is delivered to the Registrar). ↩
35. Civil Code of 1859, § 1255, which allows a deed the grantor has not acknowledged to be recorded on proof of its execution by a subscribing witness before a judge of a court of record, sets no minimum age for that witness; nor does § 1257, requiring the officer taking the proof to certify the names, residences, and evidence of the witnesses examined. Competency turned on understanding: Republic v. Ah Wong, 10 Haw. 524, 525 (1896). ↩
36. Zupplein v. Austin, 6 Haw. 8, 14 (1867); Bishop Trust Co. v. Thomas, 32 Haw. 140, 144 (1931) (no distinction between real and personal property in descent). ↩
37. Civil Code of 1859, § 1447 (ch. XXXII, “Of the Descent of Property, both Real and Personal”); carried through the Revised Laws of 1925, § 3302, of 1935, § 4810, and of 1945, § 12070, now HRS § 532-2. ↩
38. Civil Code of 1859, § 1448 (equal division among the children, with representation; failing issue, one-half to the surviving spouse and one-half to the parents, then to brothers and sisters and their issue; a sole surviving spouse takes all; symmetrical for a woman intestate); amended by an act of 1872, ch. 1, § 1, which was repealed by an act of 1898, ch. 47, § 2, and replaced by § 1 of the same act; carried through the Revised Laws of 1925, § 3305, of 1935, § 4813, and of 1945, § 12073, now HRS § 532-4. ↩
39. Civil Code of 1859, § 1299 (a life estate in one-third of the land the husband held during the marriage, and an absolute one-third of his movable effects at his death after payment of his debts); Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, §§ 12100–12114. ↩
40. Civil Code of 1859, § 1305 (the widow may occupy the land or take one-third of its rents and profits until her dower is assigned) and § 1306 (she may remain in the husband's house and have maintenance out of his estate). ↩
41. Civil Code of 1859, § 1307 (a widow divorced for her own misconduct is not endowed). The bar was recast by Act 212, series D-192, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1945, which amended Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12108 (“Bar of dower”) and added § 12014.01 (“Determination of bar to dower or curtesy”); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 4 August 2026). For the rule in force at the end of the period — dower or curtesy barred by willful desertion of at least one year before the death — see The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Hawaii as of January 1, 1959, Women’s Bureau Bulletin 157-52 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), § 15. ↩
42. Civil Code of 1859, § 1286 (the husband's curtesy in the wife's land); Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12115. ↩
43. The right to refuse the provision made by the will and take dower or curtesy instead rests on Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1955, § 319-14, identified as the election statute in Matter of Estate of Glover, 45 Haw. 569, 570 n.1 (1962); the same rule sits in Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, ch. 292 (“Dower and Curtesy”), whose § 12115 is headed “Curtesy; election between curtesy and will.” The possession of the home, clothing, and household goods allowed the surviving spouse and the family, and the court-ordered allowance for their support during administration — which took priority over every other charge except funeral and administration expenses — rest on Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1955, § 317-21, digested at The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Hawaii as of January 1, 1959, Women’s Bureau Bulletin 157-52 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), §§ 16–17; digital images, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-52_dolwb_1959.pdf : accessed 4 August 2026). The corresponding chapter in the earlier volume is ch. 290 (“Probate: Jurisdiction and Procedure”). Chapter titles and section headings are taken from the cumulative notes to the Revised Laws printed in Session Laws of Hawaii, 1951 (Honolulu: Printed by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Limited, 1951); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 4 August 2026). ↩
44. Civil Code of 1859, § 1346 (the guardian gives a bond with surety, makes an inventory, manages the estate, accounts within one year and afterward, and pays over the estate to the minor at the end). ↩
45. Civil Code of 1859, § 1344 (if the minor is under thirteen the judge of probate appoints the guardian; if above thirteen the minor may nominate his own, subject to the judge’s approval); the age was raised to sixteen by Act 10, § 1, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1913 (approved 11 March 1913), amending R.L.H. § 2296, ch. 149, so that the judge appoints below sixteen and the minor may nominate above it. ↩
46. Civil Code of 1859, § 1345 (the guardian has the custody and tuition of the minor and the care and management of his estate, and continues in office until the minor arrives at the age of twenty years, or until discharged according to law). The section fixes twenty for every minor and does not distinguish by sex, so it did not track the female majority of eighteen set by § 1487 until the Act of 1919, ch. 116, § 1, equalized majority at twenty. Carried to Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, and now HRS ch. 551. ↩ ↩
47. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Hawaii as of January 1, 1959, Women’s Bureau Bulletin 157-52 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), § 1 (“Age of majority”): the marriage of a female minor operates as a legal discharge so far as guardianship of her person is concerned, citing Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1955, § 338-35. Digital images, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-52_dolwb_1959.pdf : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
48. Civil Code of 1859, § 1345 (the father, and after him the mother, retains the care of the minor's person and education) and § 1347 (a father may appoint a testamentary guardian by his last will). ↩
49. Civil Code of 1859, § 1289: children whose parents were not legally married are denominated bastards and are not entitled to inherit from their male parents without express bequest; the female parent is compellable to maintain and support them during minority; and they are capable of taking by inheritance from the mother without a will. And see § 1452 (an illegitimate child is an heir to the mother), carried as Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1935, § 4815. ↩
50. Civil Code of 1859, § 1289, with the appended act “To Render Legitimate Children Born Out of Wedlock” (children declared legitimate on the marriage of the parents with each other). ↩
51. Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, ch. 299 (“Illegitimates: Paternity Proceedings”), § 12301, at p. 1555 of that volume, as amended by Act 177, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1945 (series D-195), and further amended by Act 57, series D-176, Laws of the Territory of Hawaii ... Regular Session, 1947, at pp. 393–396, which extended the time for an application from six months to two years and provided that a child born dead, or dying before the application was filed or during the proceedings, was no bar to a warrant and judgment; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 4 August 2026). The later shape of the proceeding is digested at The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Hawaii as of January 1, 1959, Women’s Bureau Bulletin 157-52 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), §§ 28–29; digital images, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-52_dolwb_1959.pdf : accessed 4 August 2026). ↩
52. Civil Code of 1859, § 1463 (every person of full age and of sound mind may dispose of his estate, real and personal, by will); full age is twenty for a man and eighteen for a woman (note 6). An amendment of 1890, ch. 48, § 1, fixed the age at twenty for every person without regard to sex, and it stood so through Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1925, § 3317, and Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1935, § 4910, to Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12170 (“Every person of the age of twenty years and of sound mind may dispose of his estate both real and personal by will”). ↩
53. Civil Code of 1859, § 1464 (any married woman may dispose of her property by will); carried to Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12171. ↩
54. Civil Code of 1859, § 1465 (no will valid unless in writing, signed by the testator or by another in his presence and at his direction, and attested by two or more competent witnesses subscribing in the testator's presence). ↩
55. Civil Code of 1859, § 1465 (a will must be attested by two or more competent witnesses subscribing their names in the testator’s presence), which fixes no age; and § 1466 (a witness competent when he attests does not defeat the will by becoming incompetent afterward). Competency was governed by the general rule of evidence, which turned on understanding rather than on age: Republic v. Ah Wong, 10 Haw. 524, 525 (1896). Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/civilcodehawaii00armsgoog : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
56. Civil Code of 1859, § 1467 (a beneficial gift to a subscribing witness is void unless there are two other competent subscribing witnesses); § 1468 (a witness who would take a share had there been no will keeps that much of the gift); § 1466 (subsequent incompetency of a witness does not defeat the will). ↩
57. Civil Code of 1859, § 1472 (a marriage after the making of a will, together with the birth of a child, revokes the will); carried through Revised Laws of 1925, § 3325, and of 1935, § 4919, to Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12179, and there extended to the legal adoption of a child by Act 270, series D-235, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1951; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 4 August 2026). ↩
58. Civil Code of 1859, § 1473 (a will made by an unmarried woman is revoked by her subsequent marriage). ↩
59. Civil Code of 1859, § 1474 (no written will allowed to be proved after five years from the testator's death, with an allowance where a minor is interested). ↩
60. The Civil Code of 1859 fixes no minimum age for an executor; an executor had to be competent to accept the trust and to give the probate bond, which required full age, and where a minor was named the court committed administration to a competent adult. The Territory likewise set no age: the statutory qualification was residence, at Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12009, carried from Act 182, series C-120, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1943 (approved 12 May 1943), which required every executor, administrator, and guardian appointed by a Territorial court to be an individual residing in the Territory or a trust company organized under its laws, sparing anyone already appointed. A married woman could serve, by Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12368, carried from the Act of 1888, ch. 11, § 4. ↩
61. The tax law of 27 December 1826, the first written tax law of the islands, requiring of each man half a picul of sandalwood or four Spanish dollars and of each woman a mat six feet by twelve, or tapa, or one dollar. The act itself predates the printed session laws; its terms are given in Kuykendall, Ralph S., The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume I: 1778–1854, Foundation and Transformation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1938), 90, and are summarized at “Poll Tax,” Images of Old Hawaii (https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/poll-tax/ : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩
62. Constitution of 1840, “Prerogatives of the King,” at p. 12 of Translation of the Constitution and Laws of the Hawaiian Islands, Established in the Reign [of] Kamehameha III (Lahainaluna, 1842): the King has the direction of the government property — the poll tax, the land tax, the three days' monthly labor — though in conformity to the laws, and lands forfeited for the nonpayment of taxes revert to him. The rates are in the same volume, ch. III, “An Act to Regulate the Taxes,” §§ 1–2, at pp. 24–26. The translator's preface warns that the rendering is not literal and that the Hawaiian original governs judicial proceedings. Photo-facsimile reprint, Washington, D.C.: Statute Law Book Co., 1934. ↩
63. An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Law Relating to Internal Taxes, §§ 2–16, printed in Compiled Laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom (Honolulu: Printed at the Hawaiian Gazette Office, 1884), pp. 116 ff. (poll tax $1 on males 17–60; school tax $2 on males 20–60; road tax $2 on males 17–50, workable off in labor; property tax three-quarters of one percent on real and personal property; dog and vehicle taxes; exemptions for infirmity, poverty, and students); and the Act of 16 August 1854 repealing the exemptions of clergymen, missionaries and their servants, school inspectors, trustees, and constables, and making soldiers liable to the school tax from 1 January 1855, printed at Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1854 (Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1854), p. 34; digital images, Hawaiian Kingdom (https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/civilcode/pdf/CL_Title_2.pdf : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩ ↩
64. Act 20, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1901, the Territory’s first net income tax, at two percent on individual income above $1,000 and on corporate net profits; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 8 August 2026). The sequence of Territorial tax enactments is summarized at Tax Foundation of Hawaii, “Evolution of the Tax System in Hawaii,” and at “How Hawaii Got Its Tax System,” Honolulu Record, vol. 9, no. 26, summarizing Robert M. Kamins. ↩
65. Revised Laws of Hawaii, §§ 1224, 1225, and 1226 — the poll, school, and road taxes, “the three together being styled the ‘personal taxes’” — as amended by Act 226, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1923, quoted and construed in Hawaii Attorney General, Opinion No. 1163, 24 August 1924. Section 1224 laid an annual tax of one dollar on every male inhabitant of the Territory, and on every female inhabitant having an independent income, between the ages of twenty and sixty, unless exempted by law; the 1923 amendment inserted the words as to a female inhabitant. The opinion reads an independent income to mean one that maintains a woman in her station in life without outside assistance, instancing teachers, stenographers, and nurses, and notes that the legislature had long exempted young and old men, firemen, soldiers, and clergymen, and also the infirm, the indigent, and lepers. Digital images, Hawaii Department of Taxation (https://files.hawaii.gov/tax/legal/agop/1920_29/OP1163.PDF : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩ ↩
66. The poll tax, by then consolidating the school and road taxes, was reset in 1932 as a five-dollar tax on employees and was abolished in 1943; a tax on wages, salaries, and dividends was enacted in 1933 for relief funds; and the personal property tax was abolished in 1947. Tax Foundation of Hawaii, “Evolution of the Tax System in Hawaii” (https://www.tfhawaii.org/wordpress/blog/evolution-of-the-tax-system-in-hawaii/ : accessed 27 July 2026); and see “Poll Tax,” Images of Old Hawaii (https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/poll-tax/ : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩
67. Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, 1864, art. 62: every male subject “who shall have paid his taxes,” who has attained twenty years and been domiciled in the Kingdom for a year, and who meets the property or income and literacy requirements, is entitled to one vote for the representatives of his district; the property and income requirements were repealed by the legislature in 1874. Constitution of 1887, art. 59 (an elector of nobles must have attained twenty years and “paid his taxes”) and art. 62 (the same requirement for an elector of representatives). Transcriptions, Hawaiian Independence (http://www.hawaii-nation.org/constitution-1864.html and http://www.hawaii-nation.org/constitution-1887.html : accessed 8 August 2026). No comparable condition attached to the Territorial poll tax: see the personal-tax sections at note 62. ↩
68. Civil Code of 1859, tit. 4, art. XLVIII (“Of Juries and of Trial by Jury”), §§ 1185–1201: each governor, with a judge of a court of record, prepares annually in January a list of one hundred native Hawaiians in his division who are in their opinion competent to serve as jurors (§ 1185), and the governors of Oahu and Maui prepare semi-annually, in March and September, lists of fifty foreigners by birth or of foreign parentage (§ 1188); a native Hawaiian accused of crime is tried by a jury composed entirely of natives and a naturalized foreigner by a jury composed entirely of foreigners (§ 1197); in a civil case between a native Hawaiian and a foreigner the jury is composed of an equal number of each, drawn alternately, unless either party with the consent of the other waives the right to a mixed jury (§ 1196); where the accused is an alien the clerk may ask his consul to propose thirty-six names (§§ 1192–1195); and the jury is of twelve (§ 1198). The article fixes no age, property, or literacy qualification. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/civilcodehawaii00armsgoog : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩ ↩
69. Hawaiian Organic Act, Act of 30 April 1900, ch. 339, 31 Stat. 141, at § 83: the laws requiring juries of aliens or foreigners only, or impaneled of natives of Hawaii only, are repealed, and all juries are to be constituted without reference to the race or place of nativity of the jurors; but no person may serve who is not a male citizen of the United States, twenty-one years of age, and able understandingly to speak, read, and write English; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_31 : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩
70. Hawaiian Organic Act, § 83; Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 9791 (a juror must be a male citizen of twenty-one or over), per Legal Status of Women, Bulletin 157-50. ↩
71. Act of 1 April 1952, ch. 127, § 1, 66 Stat. 32, amending § 83 of the Hawaiian Organic Act; the section as amended no longer confines jury service to male citizens. Women’s eligibility for grand and petit juries on the same terms as men is stated at Legal Status of Women, Bulletin 157-52, § 32. ↩
72. The Penal Code of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Compiled from the Penal Code of 1850 and the Various Penal Enactments Since Made (Honolulu, Oahu: Printed at the Govt. Press, 1869), ch. IV (“Capacity and Responsibility for Offenses”), §§ 1–2 (an infant under seven is incompetent to commit an offense; between seven and fourteen, competency is determined by the evidence of the child's intelligence and understanding, with no presumption for or against; full responsibility at fourteen); digital images, Hawaiian Kingdom (https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/pdf/Penal_Code.pdf : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩
73. Republic v. Ah Wong, 10 Haw. 524, 525 (1896): there is no precise age within which children are excluded from testifying, their competency being determined not by their age but by the degree of their knowledge and understanding. The statutory rule descends from the Act of 1876, ch. 32, §§ 49–51, carried through the Revised Laws into the sections later codified as HRS §§ 621-14, 621-16, and 621-17 (repealed 1980); § 621-16 let the court receive the evidence of a minor on affirmation, provided it was proved that the minor understood the nature and object of the affirmation. Competency turned on understanding and interest rather than on race or sex. ↩
74. Hawaiian Organic Act, § 4 (citizens of the Republic of Hawaii on 12 August 1898 declared citizens of the United States and of the Territory); United States v. Sai, 1 U.S.D.C. Haw. 118 (1901); the Chinese Exclusion Act was extended to Hawaii by the Organic Act, and federal naturalization limits on “aliens ineligible to citizenship” reached the jury service and naturalization of many Asian immigrants. ↩

Note: This law guide was created with assistance from multiple AI tools. Though a diligent effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, there may be unintentional errors. It's important to check the primary sources as needed to ensure accuracy.