Today the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the resolution Congress passed in 1993 to apologize for U.S. involvement in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy—a determination that remains controversial among historians—did not affect Hawaii’s sovereign authority to sell or transfer the lands that the United States had granted to the State at the time of its admission to the Union.  In an opinion by Justice Alito, the Court correctly explained that the words of the Apology Resolution were conciliatory and hortatory, creating no substantive rights—and indeed the resolution’s operative clauses differ starkly from those which provided compensation to, for example, the Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.

Importantly, the Court also noted that it would “raise grave constitutional concerns” if any act of Congress purported to cloud Hawaii’s title to sovereign lands so long after its admission to the Union.  This last point is perhaps most important to the ongoing debate over the “Akaka Bill,” which would create a race-based entity to extract political and economic concessions from the state and federal governments on behalf of ill-defined “native Hawaiians.”  It is delicious irony that Hawaii’s attorney general, Mark Bennett, an Akaka Bill supporter, secured this victory.

Just as Hawaii is now allowed to develop state lands for the benefit of all its citizens, hopefully Congress will in future refrain from inflaming racial divisions and instead treat all Hawaiians, regardless of race, with the legal equality to which they are entitled.

Further Cato materials on the above: Here’s our brief in the case, Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs.  Here are articles I wrote on the case and on the on the Akaka Bill.  Here is a write-up of a debate I had at the University of Hawaii last month.  Finally, here is a podcast I did for the Grassroot Institute (Hawaii’s free-market think tank) – where, among other things, I correctly predicted the Court’s vote today and the scope of its opinion.

The South Carolina NAACP is among the most strident opponents of a new education tax credit proposal in that state that would make it easier for families – especially poor families – to choose private schools for their kids.

But the NAACP’s national platform states that:

The NAACP is a leading advocate of equal access to quality education.  In an effort to promote and ensure education opportunities for minority youth, the NAACP offers the following national scholarships: Earl G. Graves Scholarship, Agnes Jones Scholarship, …. These awards help eliminate financial difficulties that may hinder students’ education goals.   

Doesn’t that put the SC NAACP’s position into clear conflict with its parent organization? Actually, no. I deleted the qualifier “higher” before the word “education” in the block quote above. The NAACP strongly supports scholarships for poor kids to attend private schools, so long as the kids are over 18 or so.

A few years ago I debated this bizarre inconsistency with a very candid and pleasant NAACP representative, and his response boiled down to this: ”I lived through the Jim Crow South and I don’t trust a bunch of white Republicans to have our best interests in mind.” Fair enough. We shouldn’t trust politicians of any stripe to have the public’s interests in mind on any issue. We should instead look at what actually works best both here and around the world, and do that.

From the largest shanty town in Africa, to the slums of Hyderabad, India, to the remote rural villages of in-land China, the poor are already choosing private schools in vast numbers. And those schools are significantly outperforming their public sector counterparts at a fraction of the cost. Their stories are told in The Beautiful Tree, a compelling new narrative non-fiction book by scholar and world-traveler James Tooley. Cato is launching the book at noon on April 15th at our DC headquarters. I hope someone from the NAACP will attend.

Oh, and in case it matters to anyone, the lead advocate of SC’s tax credit school choice program is state senator Robert Ford, an African American Democrat. For some reason the NAACP still opposes it.