Mari J. Matsuda

Law and Culture in the District Court of Honolulu, 1844–1845: A Case Study of the Rise of Legal Consciousness

This article considers the role of Western law in the transformation of Hawaiian culture. The transformation is revealed through the newly-translated Minute Books that recorded the day-to-day business of the lowest level courts of the middle period of the Hawaiian monarchy. The Minute Books for the District of Honolulu, 1844-1845, show that native Hawaiian commoners actively embraced the Western system of law and courts. This article searches through the Minute Books for the answer to these questions: Why did the Hawaiians adopt with enthusiasm the idea of legal redress for grievances? To what extent did Western legal ideas enter the consciousness of ordinary Hawaiians? How did Western legal consciousness I con-

My Teacher Loves Me but She Hates Mice: Or, an Existential Lamentation on the Loss of the Public School.

When and where did we learn to stop caring about rodent feces in a child’s classroom? This essay is a lamentation, delivered as opening remarks at a gathering of educators concerned about access to a rich and relevant curriculum for all children. The reality of public education in the growing portion of the United States that is not wealthy, is of unmet needs at every level. A political economy of divestment, coupled with an ideology that promotes a sense of both futility and inevitability, allows our schools to exist without teaching. This piece calls citizens back to public schools. Our schools are the last place where a sense of public entitlement still holds moral force, and activism centered in schools is a starting place for reclaiming the notion of a collective and mutual obligation of care.

Called from within : early women lawyers of Hawaiʿi

The 17 women of the Hawaii bar whose biographies are presented lived through, and were involved in, the dramatic changes that brought Hawaii from monarchy independent Republic to Territory and, finally, to statehood. The introducti by editor Matsuda places the lives of these early women lawyers in t