Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs – Post-Decision SCOTUScast
SCOTUScast 10-5-09 featuring Todd F. Gaziano
SCOTUScast 10-5-09 featuring Todd F. Gaziano
On March 31, 2009, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs. In this case, the Court considered whether the Apology Resolution passed by Congress restricted the State of Hawaii’s sovereign authority to transfer publicly held land for private development. In a 9-0 decision delivered by Justice Alito, the Court ruled that the Resolution did not create new substantive rights that limited Hawaii's sovereign authority.
To discuss the decision, we have the Director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Todd F. Gaziano.
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President, Center for Individual Rights
Todd Gaziano is the President of the Center for Individual Rights. Mr. Gaziano received his J.D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He received his B.A. from West Virginia University, summa cum laude in 1985. He was selected as a Truman Scholar from West Virginia while an undergraduate.
Mr. Gaziano’s previous legal work includes service as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones, as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, as a chief subcommittee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Houston trial attorney, and as a chief corporate legal officer. He also served a six-year term as commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2008-2013), where he helped conduct oversight and investigations of civil rights agencies.
For most of the last 25 years, Mr. Gaziano was a legal scholar and public interest law leader, promoting individual liberty in the Supreme Court and Congress. From 1997 to 2013, he was the founding director of the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. From 2014 until he joined CIR, he was the Chief of Legal Policy and Strategic Research, and Director of the Center for the Separation of Powers, at Pacific Legal Foundation.