ABSTRACT
The Hawaii statutes at issue in Rice were inventively drafted to include the word "ancestry" for fear that the term "race" would be grounds to strike down the law. In both Rice v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs and in Haak v. Rochester School District, neither side raised any questions about the existence of human races or the ability of the average citizen to make valid judgments as to who belongs to which race. In Rice, the court, in effect, took judicial notice of the commonsense definition of race. The critical points are that in both Rice and Haak, neither side raised any questions about the existence of human races or the ability of the average citizen to make valid judgments as to who belongs to which race. A critical question is whether the courts recognize the existence of race as a mere social construct or as an underlying biological reality.
