Hawai'i's public trust cases derive much of their strength from constitutional language adopted during the state's 1978 Constitutional Convention. The constitutional language, in turn, was heavily informed by the strong Native Hawaiian activism that had gained traction in the 1970s. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that all six of the public trust cases surveyed here relied to some degree on Native Hawaiian history, values, and cultural practices in coming to their conclusions. All of the cases, for instance, acknowledged that the public trust encompasses Native Hawaiian traditional and customary rights, which the state and its agencies must take into consideration when allocating trust resources.
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