The Bookshelf...Hawaii's 1968 ConCon

Books of note in the collection -

With an Understanding Heart: Constitution Making in Hawaii, by Norman Meller, is an account of the 1968 Constitutional Convention. What makes this an interesting history is that, throughout, Professor Meller draws comparisons between 1968 and the previous 1950 ConCon which drafted the constitution for statehood. (Statehood in 1959 came midway between the two ConCons.) The author called this 148-page study "one person's observations" but he was eminently qualified to observe and analyze. In 1947 Meller became director of the Legislative Reference Bureau, which did research for the 1950 convention, and in 1955 became professor of political science at the University of Hawaii. The book covers "tooling up" the community, delegate elections, pre-convention preparations, the convention at work, and the resulting constitution and "selling" it, and does a post-convention appraisal. Heart was published in 1971 by the National Municipal League as part of its State Constitutional Convention Studies. (JK2415 H3 1968 A283)