Definition
Hawaii refers to the archipelago of islands located in the north-central Pacific Ocean, approximately 2,400 miles southwest of the continental United States, and to the political and governmental entities that have successively governed those islands. In its current legal sense, Hawaii is the fiftieth state of the United States, admitted to the Union on August 21, 1959, under the Hawaii Admission Act (Pub. L. 86-3). As a state, Hawaii exercises the full sovereign attributes of statehood under the federal constitutional framework.
Historically, the term has carried distinct legal meanings corresponding to successive governmental forms:
1. Kingdom of Hawaii: The constitutional monarchy established under the Hawaiian Islands' indigenous chiefly system and formalized through 19th-century constitutional development, lasting until the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani in January 1893.
2. Republic of Hawaii: A provisional government was formed in January 1893 following the overthrow of the monarchy; a republic was formally proclaimed and a new constitution promulgated on July 4, 1894. This republic featured a president elected for a six-year term, a four-member cabinet, and a fifteen-member council of state.
3. Territory of Hawaii: Following annexation by joint resolution of Congress (Newlands Resolution, 1898) and formal organization under the Hawaiian Organic Act of 1900, Hawaii became an incorporated territory of the United States, governed under federal territorial law.
4. State of Hawaii: The current form, a full member of the federal union with two U.S. senators, representation in the House, and a state constitution adopted in 1950 and operative upon admission.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An insular state of the United States, formerly a territory; also, the archipelago itself; also, the largest individual island of the chain.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; typically referenced in geographical gazetteers as the Sandwich Islands, the name applied by Captain Cook and commonly used in American legal and diplomatic documents through the mid-19th century.
Editorial note: The common understanding of "Hawaii" today is unambiguously the U.S. state. Legal and historical sources use the same word to denote four distinct political entities — kingdom, provisional government, republic, territory, and state — each carrying different legal capacities, treaty obligations, and jurisdictional frameworks. A researcher encountering "Hawaii" in a pre-1959 legal text must determine which governmental form is being referenced, as rights, contracts, and obligations arising under each are governed by different bodies of law.
Common Confusion
The island of Hawaii (often called the Big Island) shares its name with the state and the archipelago. In legal documents and court records, "Hawaii" unqualified may refer to the state, the archipelago, or the specific island depending on context. Researchers working with land records, probate matters, or county-level instruments must verify whether "Hawaii" denotes the state jurisdiction or Hawaii County (which encompasses the Big Island). Additionally, the Republic of Hawaii is sometimes conflated with the Provisional Government of 1893; they are legally distinct entities with separate constitutional instruments.
Why It Matters in Research
The layered political history of Hawaii creates significant traps for corpus researchers. The governing law applicable to any Hawaiian legal instrument depends entirely on which governmental form was in existence at the time of execution. Land titles, in particular, present acute complexity: the Great Mahele of 1848 reorganized Hawaiian land tenure under Kingdom law, and grants made under the Kingdom, Republic, and Territory operate under different chains of authority. Federal preemption questions, Native Hawaiian rights claims, and ceded lands disputes all require researchers to trace back through these successive regimes.
Researchers using 19th-century American legal sources will frequently encounter Hawaii under the name "Sandwich Islands," which remained common in U.S. legal and diplomatic correspondence well into the 1870s. Bouvier's entry, reflecting the state of affairs as of the mid-1890s, describes the Republic — which means any Bouvier citation referencing Hawaiian governance predates both territorial organization and statehood, and cannot be read as describing U.S. federal law applicable to Hawaii.
The territorial period (1900–1959) is particularly dense with federal-territorial jurisdictional questions. Hawaiian courts during this period operated under a hybrid system in which federal law governed but Hawaiian customary law and Kingdom-era precedents retained residual influence, especially in property and water rights. Researchers should not assume that federal common law principles applied in the territories map cleanly onto Hawaii's territorial jurisprudence.
Post-statehood, Hawaii retains unique constitutional features including explicit protections for certain rights of Native Hawaiians that have no parallel in other state constitutions, and that have generated ongoing federal litigation with no clean doctrinal resolution.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary captures Hawaii at the moment of the Republic — a transitional snapshot that is simultaneously useful and limiting. Bouvier notes the proclamation of the republic on July 4, 1894, the constitutional framework (six-year presidential term, four-member cabinet, fifteen-member council of state), and the sequence from provisional government. What Bouvier necessarily could not address was the subsequent annexation, territorial organization, or statehood — all of which transformed Hawaii's legal identity completely.
Bouvier's entry is most useful to researchers as a terminus ante quem: it confirms that as of the dictionary's relevant edition, Hawaii was a foreign republic, not a U.S. possession. This has implications for contract law, conflict of laws, and treaty interpretation in cases arising from that era. No major historical law dictionary addresses Hawaii's territorial or statehood periods with meaningful doctrinal depth, as those periods are covered adequately by federal statutory and case law rather than general legal dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
Hawaii is the only U.S. state that was previously an independent recognized republic. This origin affects certain ongoing legal questions, particularly regarding the status of ceded lands (lands transferred from the Republic to the United States upon annexation, later transferred to the state upon admission) and the legal position of Native Hawaiian people, who have no federally recognized tribal status equivalent to that of continental American Indian tribes.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Territories and Statehood (for the territorial period and admission process); Pacific Insular Areas (for comparative treatment of U.S. insular jurisdictions); Native Hawaiian Rights (for ceded lands and indigenous status questions).