08-17-2015, 03:05 PM
I hate to play the broken record here, but: many laws were created during the subdivision boom of the 1950s and 1960s, but apparently only the shack-dwellers who reside in those subdivisions are breaking the law.
Rule of law means it applies to everyone equally, otherwise it becomes the rule of "whatever we feel like making up today".
Cultural/religous practices are protected by "the law", but as others have pointed out, this does not extend to blocking a road and preventing others from exercising their rights, which in this case include building a telescope on land leased from the State.
To argue that "but the State should never have leased that land" attempts to open a can of worms that would eventually unravel everything that was done since the US declared Hawaii to be a Territory. (Here I would add "starting with the subdivisions", but it's more likely that the Volcano Trail would provide a test case -- it's been adopted as a "road" in ways that likely violate the Highways Act of 1892.)
Rule of law means it applies to everyone equally, otherwise it becomes the rule of "whatever we feel like making up today".
Cultural/religous practices are protected by "the law", but as others have pointed out, this does not extend to blocking a road and preventing others from exercising their rights, which in this case include building a telescope on land leased from the State.
To argue that "but the State should never have leased that land" attempts to open a can of worms that would eventually unravel everything that was done since the US declared Hawaii to be a Territory. (Here I would add "starting with the subdivisions", but it's more likely that the Volcano Trail would provide a test case -- it's been adopted as a "road" in ways that likely violate the Highways Act of 1892.)