The annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States, formalized by the Newlands Resolution of July 7, 1898, remains a contested event more than a century later. The dispute centers on two intertwined questions: whether the manner of annexation was legally valid under domestic and international law, and whether the broader process by which the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown and absorbed represents a defensible exercise of national policy or an illegitimate seizure of a sovereign nation. These questions bear directly on the modern Hawaiian sovereignty movement, which argues that the Kingdom of Hawaii continues to exist as a matter of law, as well as on broader historiographical assessments of late-19th-century American expansionism. The competing positions below are not resolved by a single court ruling or scholarly consensus; rather, they reflect different starting premises about the relationship between domestic legislative power, international law, and the consent of a colonized population.

Advocates of this position argue that the joint resolution method used to annex Hawaii was a constitutionally valid exercise of congressional power, separate from and not subordinate to the treaty process. They point to precedent: the United States had previously annexed Texas in 1845 using the same mechanism, after a treaty-based annexation failed to secure two-thirds Senate support. The United States Supreme Court held that territory could be acquired as absolutely by an act of Congress as it could be acquired by treaty, citing Texas and Hawaii as parallel cases. In *Territory of Hawaii v. Mankichi* (1903), Justice Harlan concurred that the joint resolution completed the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands and accomplished the incorporation that a treaty would have achieved.

On this view, the constitutional text assigns Congress broad authority to admit new territory, and nothing in that text restricts the method to treaties alone. Proponents further argue that the Republic of Hawaii, as the internationally recognized government of the islands at the time, possessed full authority to consent to annexation, and that it did so through its own legislative ratification. The consent of the Republic of Hawaii referenced in the resolution's preamble was signified by a resolution of the Hawaiian Senate ratifying the prior treaty. Under this reasoning, the absence of a ratified U.S.-Hawaii treaty is not fatal, because Hawaiian consent was independently expressed through that domestic ratification, and the joint resolution simply supplied the missing American half of a bilateral arrangement that had already been agreed to in substance.

Defenders of the annexation's legitimacy also note that subsequent U.S. courts, including in *Liliuokalani v. United States* (1910), treated the resolution as having definitively transferred sovereignty and extinguished prior claims, including the deposed monarch's personal property claims to crown lands. They regard over a century of unbroken U.S. governance, eventual statehood in 1959, and international acquiescence as confirming the annexation's legal effect regardless of the procedural debates that preceded it.

Critics of the annexation argue that a joint resolution is a domestic legislative instrument with no power to bind a foreign, internationally recognized sovereign state, and that only a ratified treaty between the two nations could have lawfully transferred Hawaiian sovereignty to the United States. The 1897 treaty of annexation never came close to the two-thirds Senate majority required for ratification, securing only 46 of 90 votes, and pro-annexation forces turned to a joint resolution, which required only a simple majority, specifically because the treaty route had failed. Constitutional scholar Westel W. Willoughby is cited for the view that the constitutionality of annexing Hawaii by simple legislative act was strenuously contested at the time, both in Congress and in the press.

On this view, the Texas precedent does not apply, because Texas was annexed and then admitted as a state under a process distinct from Hawaii's path to mere territorial status, and unlike Hawaii, Texas's annexation has not been subject to the same depth of sustained international-law objection. Critics also emphasize that no treaty of annexation between the United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom was ever ratified, and argue that the Republic of Hawaii, itself the product of an 1893 overthrow carried out with American military involvement, lacked the legitimate authority to consent to annexation on behalf of the Hawaiian people in the first place.

This position draws further support from the 1993 Apology Resolution passed by the U.S. Congress, which acknowledged that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States, and that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their claims to inherent sovereignty over their national lands, whether through the Kingdom, a plebiscite, or a referendum. Critics treat this congressional acknowledgment as evidence that the legal defect in the annexation process has never been formally cured. They also point to the mass native opposition documented at the time: a petition organized by the Hawaiian Patriotic League and signed by 21,269 native Hawaiians in 1897 was submitted to Congress in protest of annexation, and Senator Hoar presented to the Senate a petition signed by two-thirds of the pure native population protesting annexation. On this basis, advocates of this position, including the modern Hawaiian Kingdom government-in-exile, hold that the Hawaiian Kingdom was never lawfully extinguished and continues to exist under international law as an occupied state. See hawaii-annexation-illegitimate-viewpoint.

A third position, distinct from the legal debate, holds that whatever the procedural irregularities, annexation was a justified response to the geopolitical circumstances the United States faced in 1898. Proponents of this view emphasize the military and strategic context rather than the legal mechanism. The Spanish-American War, which involved a major naval action in the Pacific demonstrating the islands' strategic importance, created the political opening McKinley used to pursue annexation by joint resolution after a treaty had failed to secure sufficient Senate votes. Hawaii's position as a coaling and naval station was considered indispensable to projecting American power across the Pacific, particularly toward the Philippines, and proponents argue that delay risked the islands falling under the influence of a rival power, particularly Japan, which had its own substantial immigrant population already resident in Hawaii.

On this view, the choice of a joint resolution over a treaty was a pragmatic response to a Senate that could not muster a supermajority, not evidence of bad faith, and the underlying policy judgment, that incorporation served vital American security interests during a period of great-power competition, was sound independent of the procedural path taken to achieve it.

All major positions agree on the basic chronology: that a treaty of annexation failed to secure the required two-thirds Senate vote, that Congress subsequently passed the Newlands Resolution by simple majority, and that President McKinley signed it into law on July 7, 1898, with the formal transfer ceremony occurring on August 12, 1898. There is also no dispute that substantial numbers of native Hawaiians organized and submitted documented petitions opposing annexation prior to its passage, nor that the 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani involved U.S. military personnel present in Honolulu. The positions diverge sharply, however, on the legal and moral significance of these undisputed facts.

• Main Topic: hawaii-annexation
• History: Hawaii Annexation - History
• Viewpoint: hawaii-annexation-illegitimate-viewpoint
• Viewpoint: hawaii-annexation-lawful-viewpoint
• Consensus: hawaii-annexation-consensus
• Related Debate: hawaii-overthrow-1893-legitimacy-debate

1. National Archives, “Joint Resolution to Provide for Annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States,” Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, General Records of the United States Government, 1778-1992, Record Group 11, July 7, 1898, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/joint-resolution-for-annexing-the-hawaiian-islands.
2. National Archives, “The 1897 Petition Against the Annexation of Hawaii,” DocsTeach, https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hawaii-petition.
3. “The Annexation of Hawaii,” Teaching American History, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-annexation-of-hawaii/.
4. “Newlands Resolution,” Wikipedia, last modified 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newlands_Resolution.
5. “Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom,” Wikipedia, last modified 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom.
6. “Legal Status of Hawaii,” En Academic, https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/1416452.
7. *Territory of Hawaii v. Mankichi*, 190 U.S. 197 (1903), Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/190/197.
8. Hawaiian Kingdom Blog, “U.S. Constitutional Law and Customary International Law for Territorial Annexation,” April 30, 2015, https://hawaiiankingdom.org/blog/u-s-constitutional-law-and-customary-international-law-for-territorial-annexation/.
9. Nation of Hawaii, “Hawaiian Sovereignty: History and Legal Status,” https://www.nationofhawaii.org/articles/hawaiian-sovereignty-history-legal-status/.
10. Keanu Sai, interview transcript, “The Annexation That Never Was,” AlohaQuest, https://www.alohaquest.com/scripts/annexation_never_was.htm.