The Constitutional Development of the Kingdom of Hawaii

Introduction. This article had deal with the process of constitutional history of the Kingdom of Hawaii from the rise to the fall of this state. Purpose. The purpose of this work is to identify the general patterns of the development of Hawaiian constitutionalism and to identify the extent to which the constitutional and legal norms of the constitutions of 1840, 1852, 1864, 1887 reflected the social and economics processes in Hawaiian society. Methodology. The methodology includes the following methods: technical, dialectical-materialistic, historical, legal, comparative, logical, analysis and synthesis. Results. The constitutions of the Hawaiian Kingdom reflected the objective processes of the final disintegration of tribal relations, the decline of the role and influence of the old tribal aristocracy, and its replacement as the ruling class by the commercial, plantation, and industrial elite of European and North American origin. Over time, the constitutional consolidation of the power of the king and the tribal elite was replaced by the consolidation of the power of a new elite through the mechanisms of censorship democracy and constitutional parliamentary monarchy. At last these processes led to the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893 and the formation of a democratic republic on Hawaii. Conclusion. Studying the constitutional-right history of Hawaii allows us to better understand the processes of transformation of traditional societies into societies of modern capitalist model.