This two-year project involves analyzing a series of water law cases during the final years of the Kingdom of Hawai`i and the first years of US territorial reign. This study will examine how the Commissions of Private Ways and Water Rights, established by the Hawaiian monarchy, invoked traditional Hawaiian as well as Western EuroAmerican assumptions and technological practices about water in their decision-making processes. Additionally, several cases were appealed to the Supreme Court, leaving records of those decision-making processes that we will analyze as well. We will also investigate how the particular practices invoked and decisions made by the Commission and Supreme Court shaped the nature of water practices throughout the Hawaiian Islands. We will approach this through: 1) an evaluation of legal processes, 2) an analysis of the agency of individuals, 3) tracking alternate uses of water infrastructure and technology, and 4) an interpretation of institutional frameworks. A legal pluralism approach is adopted to address how the law both reflects and prompts change over time in the systems of practice, knowledge, and management attached to water.
Water continues to be a pressing issue for Hawaiians as well as for people around the world. International pressures to privatize water are, in some respects, an extension of the drive to privatization begun in the nineteenth century and earlier. Understanding the dynamics of decision-making in Hawai`i during the late nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century is significant because these processes not only shaped the character of contemporary water conflicts, but established a foundation for water conflict resolution for the remainder of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Understanding the specific political, legal, scientific, and technological context within which water decisions were made during this period could be of value in current and future decision-making processes by state agencies and the judiciary, which today draw heavily upon historic precedents. This analysis of Hawaiian water law during a period of intense transformation at the end of the nineteenth century sheds light on the ways that law and legal systems simultaneously reflect and shape the society within which they operate. Furthermore the project will provide a focus on the complex dynamics which arose as indigenous societies responded to, adapted and challenged western colonizing efforts. Understanding the context that created Hawai`is particular system offers insight into law as a dynamic and contested system with significant implications for the distribution of power and wealth in Hawai`i and the Pacific Rim.
